Juvenilia ✔/ a Nonfiction Undergraduate University Collection

ARTS 4000 Final Project Report

ARTS4000

CreatedHere Magazine

September 3rd, 2021

ARTS 4000 Final Project Report

As an Online Editor for CreatedHere, a local non-profit art magazine based in Fredericton, NB, I was able to dip my toes in a field of interest to determine if an editorial career path was suitable for me. 

The role was somewhat curated for me as I indicated a preference for editing as opposed to writing and interviewing for articles. It was my job to help emerging writers and artists gain experience in the publishing field and to foster and encourage further interest in the field. 

The initial intention of my research was to inform me of how I could apply what I was learning at CreatedHere to the job I wished to create for myself in the future within the publishing industry as an independent book publisher, but I changed my mind as I started doing more research. 

As a result, the research I ended up doing was more beneficial in hindsight than as a preventative measure for navigating potential challenges (which I of course encountered). 

As such, the research component will be presented as a study between what I did, and what I should have done. I will highlight challenges I encountered, and demonstrate (where applicable) how I overcame those challenges. 

Some I did not do very well, and I can say that honestly. My placement has not been completed and I still have hours to do, so for what it's worth, I will apply what I can in the final stretch.

CreatedHere, an art magazine out of Fredericton, New Brunswick, started in 2014 as a sole proprietorship and produced eight issues under the former owner, Marie-Hélène Morell. 

In Fall 2019, CreatedHere Magazine became a federally registered non-profit corporation with the mandate to ensure New Brunswick artists are known and valued both in-province and beyond the borders. 

CreatedHere aims to promote local artists by providing a high-quality publication under curated themes that seek to provide a tangible gallery. CreatedHere identifies artists, projects, and events, and offers online submission calls to make art and stories accessible and approachable to wide audiences with social themes from the environment and mental health to creativity and identity.

CreatedHere publishes predominantly creative non-fiction, which I actually found simpler to understand than I thought I would. In my mind, there was always something cloudy and unidentifiable about creative non-fiction. 

There is a section in "Creative Nonfiction in the Crosshairs" by Lee Gutkind, that describes the difference between journalism and nonfiction and cleared everything right up for me. In Gutkind's words, "Both write true stories and include factual information." (Gutkind, 4). 

He goes on to describe the main difference, which is that journalism strives to be objective while "creative non-fiction writers are encouraged to be subjective." 

Once I understood this distinction, something clicked, and I was able to jump right on board with editing this genre. In fact, I instantly became more comfortable because I wouldn't have to be so careful with fact-checking or feeling out of my depth if I had to edit an article on a topic with which I was unfamiliar. 

From a research standpoint, I didn't have to really look out for libel, or embarrassing fact-checking errors, as the views of the author did not need to be corroborated beyond personal experience in a certain sense.