Byzantium

06/11/2021

While we are eagerly anticipating the arrival of our printed journals in the summer we wanted to share with you the online publication!

Byzantium 31: https://issuu.com/allison.munden/docs/byz_issuufile

Byzantium is Cal Poly's award-winning annual literary journal produced entirely by undergraduate students. The journal’s stories and poems are chosen during annual open call for submissions. All work accepted for publication in the journal is automatically considered in Cal Poly's longstanding ann...

05/25/2021

We are so proud to announce the winners of Byzantium's first art contest! We can't wait fo you all to see them in color soon!

05/25/2021

We are so proud to announce the winners of this year's Alfred Landwehr Fiction Writing Contest!! We are so proud of these stories and the authors and can't wait for you all to read them!

05/25/2021

We are proud to announce the winners of this year's Kevin Clark Poetry Writing Contest!! We are so proud of these poems and their authors and we are very excited for you all to read them soon!

03/12/2021

Calling all artists!!! For the first time ever Byzantium will be featuring student artwork! We are looking for talented student artists regardless of grade or major to submit their artwork. Top artists will win the first ever Byzantium art contest and win prizes!!!

02/22/2021

We are thrilled to announce our judge for this year's Kevin Clark poetry writing contest Mag Gabbert!
Mag Gabbert holds a PhD in creative writing from Texas Tech University and an MFA from The University of California at Riverside. Her essays and poems can be found in 32 Poems, Pleiades, The Rumpus, Thrush, The Massachusetts Review, Waxwing, The Pinch, and many other journals. Mag is the author of Minml Poems, a chapbook of visual poetry and nonfiction (Cooper Dillon Books, 2020). She has received poetry fellowships from Idyllwild Arts and Poetry at Round Top. Mag teaches creative writing at Southern Methodist University and serves as the interviews editor for Underblong Journal. For more information, please visit maggabbert.com.

02/22/2021

We are thrilled to announce our judge for this year's Al Landwehr fiction writing contest Akil Kumarasamy!
Akil Kumarasamy is a writer from New Jersey and the author of the story collection, Half Gods, published by FSG in 2018, which was named a New York Times Editors’ Choice, and was the recipient of the Bard Fiction Prize, Story Prize Spotlight Award and a finalist for the PEN/Robert Bingham Prize. Her work has appeared in Harper’s Magazine, American Short Fiction, Boston Review, among others. She has received fellowships from the University of East Anglia, the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, Yaddo, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. She is an Assistant Professor at the Rutgers-Newark MFA program and her debut novel is forthcoming with FSG.

12/01/2020

On this Giving Tuesday December 1st please consider donating to help support the 31st edition of Byzantium. We know times are challenging but even a donation of $10 goes a long way to help us! This project means the world to us and we thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your support and donations!
- Byzantium Editorial Team

https://bit.ly/2Vn1Y0m

Help Cal Poly San Luis Obispo raise $1,000 for the project: Support Byzantium, Cal Poly’s Literary Journal!. Your gift will make a difference!

12/01/2020

All majors. All years. All anonymous

11/25/2020

Support Byzantium!! The 31st edition of Byzantium has created a crowd funding campaign to help raise money - socially distanced - for the journal this year. We are trying to print the journal in color this year and without your support this will not be possible. The campaign is currently live and ends December 19th!!! So please donate today!
Click this link to go directly to our donation page:
https://bit.ly/3nW9yLN

11/25/2020

Meet Allison, our art director! Allison is a fourth year Art and Design major with a concentration in graphic design. Her favorite activities include playing billiards, travelling to new places, learning new skills, and reading. Her favorite graphic designers are Joshua Smith (aka Hydro74), Erik Spiekermann, Stefan Sagmeister, and Paula Scher.

11/25/2020

Meet Alex, our poetry editor! Alex is a fourth year English major and Psychology minor. His hobbies are quite eclectic, as he enjoys reading/writing fiction and nonfiction alike, lifting weights, and buying and selling Magic: The Gathering cards (MTG) for profit. To match these hobbies, his favorite poet is Gerard Manley Hopkins, his favorite author is Thomas Sowell, and his favorite bodybuilder is Ronnie Coleman, “Yeah Buddy!” He doesn’t expect many people to know about MTG but if you get into a Zoom call with him, you’ll see artwork from the cards hung on his walls. He looks forward to reading the insightful and high-quality poems you submit!

11/25/2020

Meet Emma, our fiction editor! Emma is a fourth year English major with a Spanish minor and a concentration in Technical and Professional Communication. When her nose isn’t stuck in a book, she loves spending time with friends and family, and her cat Dusty. Her favorite poets are Edna St. Vincent Millay and Robert Frost, and her favorite stories are “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. She cannot wait to read the amazing things y’all have been working on!

11/25/2020

Meet Karah, our managing editor! Karah is a fourth year English major with minors in Art History, Ethnic Studies, and Environmental Studies. An avid reader Karah can constantly be found reading multiple books for school and pleasure. Besides her love of books Karah loves the outdoors, baking, and her fur baby Sophie. Asking Karah to pick her favorite author or poet is the impossible question however, at the moment she is rediscovering a love for Emily Dickenson’s poetry, and her favorite book over quarantine was Lovely War by Julie Berry. Karah can’t wait to discover some new favorites in your submissions!

11/10/2020

Welcome to the 31st edition of Cal Poly's award winning literary journal Byzantium!!
Please note our instagram account has changed to cp_byzantium please follow it to stay up to date with news and announcements!

05/30/2020

Video messages from the English Department to the authors whose work is featured in Byzantium no. 30, compiled by your fearless 2019-2020 editorial team ❤️ We're so proud of the work of these authors!

05/29/2020

05/29/2020

Today at 4:00 is our virtual reading event!! This will be a fun event to get more out of No. 30 and to support the featured student writers along the way! To get the zoom link and password, comment below and we’ll get that right to you in DM :))

05/27/2020

Due to temporary technical difficulties on our Instagram account, we are moving our social media efforts for this week over here to our page! We'll post author takeovers here until we can get the Instagram account running again! :) Thank you for your patience and continued support of the journal and its lovely contributing authors!

05/25/2020

The link to Byzantium No. 30 is LIVE!!!

Check it out at bit.ly/byzantium30 or head over to our Instagram page to get the link and so much more!

https://www.instagram.com/p/CAndzH0jhbp/?igshid=eba4sde0zca4

05/23/2020

We're so excited to be celebrating 30 YEARS of Byzantium with a week-long celebration starting on Monday! To kick off the week, on Monday we'll be releasing a digital version of this year's journal (which has still gone to print! stay tuned for more info on the distribution of that).

Follow .calpoly on Instagram for all access throughout the week!

06/12/2019

Thank you to all who came to the unveiling of the 29th issue of Byzantium! It was such an honor to see everyone come together to celebrate each other's hard work. We are so proud of this journal and of all the talent that it holds, and we would love to share it with you! If you would like a copy of this year's Byzantium, please leave a message! Thank you to all of our supporters and writers!

11/13/2018

CALLING ALL WRITERS: Get ready for fall submission to Byzantium!

07/26/2018

A month after graduation, your 2018 team is back for one last time! We want to say thank you once again to everyone who supported us throughout our year producing Byzantium. We had a blast editing the journal and hope you enjoyed the stories and poems inside just as much as we did. Even though our time with Byzantium is over, we can't wait to see the wonderful edition next year's team will create!

06/11/2018

Thank you to all the writers featured in this year's edition of Byzantium and everyone who made this stunning thing possible!! The journal was designed by the wonderfully talented Joanne Mendoza. We are so proud of our journal this year: pick up a copy in the English Department Office or look for stacks scattered across campus!

05/17/2018

We are so happy to see that our second place poetry winner Morgan Condict has won the Academy of American Poets Prize! One of our editors' choice poets, Vanya Truong, took home an honorable mention as well.
Congrats Morgan and Vanya! We are honored to feature such accomplished poets like you two in Byzantium!

English major Morgan Condict (Paso Robles, CA) has won Cal Poly’s Academy of American Poets Contest for his poem “To an Old Coworker,” which investigates the homelessness crisis in San Francisco through a compelling, personal perspective. He will receive a $100 award from the Academy. Judging ...

05/03/2018

It's Time. The 2018 Unveiling of Byzantium is finally almost here! Join us for an evening of readings by the winning poets and authors featured in this year's edition of the journal. Free copies of Byzantium and complimentary refreshments will be available!

03/23/2018

Let the rain kiss you.
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops.
Let the rain sing you a lullaby.

The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk.
The rain makes running pools in the gutter.
The rain plays a little sleep-song on our roof at night—

And I love the rain.

—Langston Hughes

03/11/2018

We are so pleased to announce the winners of this year's Creative Writing Contests!

For the Alfred Landwehr Fiction Contest:
1st Place: Wylie Hughs - "A Lone and Ugly Creature"
2nd Place: Katie Miller - "Starlight"
3rd Place: Hunter White - "Love in the Time of Algebra"

Editor's Choices: "08-09" by Charlotte Kunde, "Karma, My Good Man" by Ben Christensen, and "Rare Birds" by Morgan Shoemaker

For the Kevin Clark Poetry Contest:
1st place: Despy Boutris - "On Overcoming Gamophobia"
2nd Place: Morgan Condict - "No Public Restroom"
3rd Place:Aaron Matsuda - "She Has Beautiful Wrists"

Editors' Choices: "A Puller's Waltz" by Brian Clark, "Blue Poem for Burnham" by Kendra Coburn, "Fidgeting" by Vanya Truong, and "Neptune" by Joshua Ronda

Be sure to congratulate them if you see them (and tag them in this post)! We're very excited to feature their works in the 28th annual edition of "Byzantium." We will have information about our Unveiling event in spring quarter soon!

02/09/2018

Prizes galore! Want a chance to win this lovely candle or cute little plant?? Come to Loverspeak TONIGHT! $3 entry (with raffle ticket) for students and $5 for the public! Baker room 101 at 6pm! @ Warren J. Baker Center for Science and Mathematics