For Helicon, Northwestern’s literary magazine, 2005 is a big year. Founded in 1980, Helicon’s spring issue will mark the 25th anniversary of the go-to outlet for the best poetry, fiction, photography and art Northwestern has to offer.

Senior RTVF and English major Eileen Korte, senior co-editor of Helicon, took time out from her busy schedule of masterminding the 25th anniversary issue’s unveiling and dreaming of her future as a big-time TV executive to sit down with PLAY.

PLAY: How did Helicon get started?

Eileen Korte: The founder lived in Chapin Residential College, and she was also in the poetry sequence part of the writing major in English, so she and two friends wanted to start a consistent literary magazine for the campus. They worked with Chapin and tied it to a journal of the humanities they had wanted to start in Chapin, so Helicon was originally called Helicon: A Journal of the Humanities. Helicon is still affiliated with Chapin, and we get our funding through the residential colleges. I guess Helicon had its start in the poetry sequence of the writing major program and in Chapin.

PLAY: What would you say has changed about Helicon over the last 25 years?

EK: In that first edition they had some faculty contributions, which Helicon no longer does. We expanded the magazine my freshman year to two issues a year; previously it had come out annually. The editors my freshman year decided it was a good way to remind the campus that we were here because when you’re only published annually, students forget about you.

PLAY: How did you first get involved with Helicon?

EK: I started on Helicon my freshman year. I started on poetry staff. My sophomore year I was on poetry staff, and I was publicity editor because I didn’t feel that Helicon was recognized broadly enough on campus. But that’s an ongoing process. After my sophomore year we decided to restructure the magazine, and I became co-editor my junior year. We’ve been staggering, so we have a senior and junior both as co-editors. That way we prevent the magazine from falling off a cliff when a senior graduates.

PLAY: What do you do on Helicon?

EK: I’m co-editor with John McGlothlin. I write our calendar for the year, which entails when the submission deadlines are, picking months for open mics, designating what each editor is going to be doing. We did an “editors note” for this issue, and John and I interviewed Christine Schutt, who was a National Book Award nominee this past year (for fiction) and was published through Northwestern University Press. We decided we wanted to have an interview component in each issue.

PLAY: What makes a good Helicon submission?

EK: We look for original work, something that’s creative and original. I remember doing the high school literary magazine, and you’d get a deluge of suicide poems, love poems, the twist ending where it’s all a dream. Those are the things at Northwestern we don’t get a lot of. We always look for something that’s a little bit different. We like different forms. We get a lot of photography. For this upcoming issue we got a lot of drawings, which we like because we don’t usually get a lot of those. Our staff varies in our tastes. We like to be open-minded.

PLAY: What changes is Helicon looking to make in the future?

EK: We’ve wanted to do three issues a year — one for each quarter. That would entail a lot more work and is something that would probably come over time. As always, we’d like to have more color pieces. We’d like to have a wider circulation on campus, make our presence known and encourage students to submit work.

PLAY: Are you doing anything special for the 25th anniversary issue?

EK: We were going to have a release party in the Dittmar Memorial Gallery when it came out May 2, and that will make it more special. I also really like the cover this time. The staff is crazy about it. It’s a series of four drawings that are spread throughout the magazine. I really like the fact we have a National Book Award nominee interview in this issue too. Those are a couple things we’re doing a little bit differently. I think with each issue, though, we’re trying to do something new and grow and expand.

— Laura Moore