The English Club, established approximately two years ago by English students, is preparing to publish its first anthology featuring works by UNLV students.
In her written interview discussing the anthology and club, Summer McLean, one of the co-presidents of the English Club, explains the story behind the founding of the club, saying, “The English Club was established in 2022, shortly before my time at UNLV but right in my wife’s first year there. It was our goal to provide the school with a new type of English club.”
McLean says that there were already book clubs where popular books were discussed and that the purpose of the English Club was to create a space to talk about books that have a “cultural or social impact” rather than popular ones.
“Things that weren’t necessarily new or popular, but worth discussing and reading anyway. Some of the books we’ve read, for example, include ‘The Color Purple’ by Alice Walker and ‘The Vegetarian’ by Han Kang. My wife and I wanted a group of people we could discuss these kinds of books with, so The English Club began as a community of deeper readers and writers,” McLean explains.
McLean emphasizes the importance of diversity both in terms of club participants and the activities they engage in when they come together. “We have all sorts of people in the club, not just English majors, and we discuss a wide variety of books, short stories, poems, and even media like video games and films. The English Club (on our regular schedule) reads and discusses books together, meets up for school events or movie theater outings, and generally keeps an active discord for discussions. We used to do themed parties whenever we’d finish a book, but due to lack of involvement and high cost, we had to cut back on these.”
After bringing book lovers together at UNLV for two years, the English Club is now preparing to take its activities a step further by publishing its first anthology. “The English Club Anthology is brand new, with this being our very first semester publishing it. We’ve got a good amount of talented writers in our club, so our goal was to provide a space for some of our members (and other students) to get published,” McLean says.
Although submissions for the anthology started some time ago, it has been extended due to the Dec. 6 tragedy and other reasons. McLean explains the details of the anthology, which will continue to accept submissions until the end of February, saying, “Right now, we’re accepting short stories (fiction or creative non-fiction), essays, and poems until the end of February with a submission fee of $5. After we receive them, we will provide line edits (where needed) and organize the stories into an anthology collection to be published. This will be published through Amazon Kindle for online reading, as well as published into print, with each author receiving a copy, and then 50 copies being printed to sell at school.”
McLean adds that they accept any kind of writing and any theme, as long as it’s not “splatterpunk or erotica.”
McLean says that the main reason behind the idea of the anthology was to provide a space for UNLV students to be published and to facilitate this process for them, stating, “I’m a published writer myself, and I know how daunting it can be to get your work published. Shorter forms of fiction or non-fiction have proven easier to tackle for most writers, especially busy students. Joleen, my wife and co-president, and I have experience with publishing, and we wanted to make this process easier on our fellow students.”
Finally, she says that they welcome everyone to the club and concludes her words as follows, “If anyone is interested in joining the club, they can do one of four things: Visit our Instagram EnglishClub_UNLV and message us, join on the involvement center, join our Discord, where we are most active or email the English Club, or my wife or I, or message us anywhere on social media, for more information.”
The English Club will continue to accept submissions until the end of February. All students interested in being featured in the anthology can submit their works, ranging from short stories to poems, through the club’s Discord.
