Bill Caraher |

Every now and then we hear about how an author got their start publishing a story, poem, or essay in a little magazine. These are heartwarming stories particularly in situations where the author goes on the greater renown.

There are a lot of other stories that reveal the significance of little magazines like NDQ.

Here’s an example. Five years ago, we published a photo essay from Wyatt Atchley based on his time exploring two soon-to-be-demolished buildings on the campus of the University of North Dakota. I had the pleasure of spending a good bit of time in those buildings because they once housed the NDQ archive which consisted of thousands of back copies of the magazine that had to moved prior to the demolition of these buildings. So. Many. Boxes.

You can check out Wyatt’s haunting and beautiful photographs in NDQ 85 here.

My time moving boxes of books and hanging out with Wyatt and some other students from the University of North Dakota in these buildings solidified my growing interest in campus buildings and the potential of photography (and even sound) to tell stories that traditional narratives could not.

This inspired me suggest to a group of graduate students in English to study another building on UND’s campus: Merrifield Hall. Merrifield Hall was once the home to NDQ and was the heart of the humanities on campus. It is being renovated and updated now, but these students wanted to document the building before the renovations began. Fortunately, I had another fantastic photographer interested in this project: Grant McMillian. Grant was not only a former student of the NDQ poetry editor, Paul Worley, but also contributed photographs and an essay to NDQ 89.3/4.

It seems fitting then to use the NDQ page to help promote a book that tells the story of Merrifield Hall on the NDQ page. Titled Campus Building, it is due to be released at the end of the month and features engagement with Merrifield Hall ranging from poetry to essays, interviews, images, and, of course, photographs.

To say that Campus Building wouldn’t have happened if not for NDQ is perhaps a bit of an overstatement, but it is not an exaggeration to suggest that little magazines create a kind of gravitational pull in their immediate area which draws together ideas, places, writers, artists, and thinkers. And, of course, boxes (So. Many. Boxes) where this project began.

The point of this little post is partly to promote the work of some our contributors to NDQ, but more to demonstrate that when you contribute or subscribe to a little magazine, you do more than just share you work or support the publication of the journal. Your promote myriad knock-on impacts that these often modest publications have in both nearby and also among the the far-flung community of readers and contributors.