English Dept. magazine prints final issue
After seven years of merging science and literature, the literary magazine Isotope has turned the final page. With its last issue, Isotope’s editor, Christopher Cokinos, wrote about his regret and relief at the cessation of the publication.
In the letter, posted on Isotope’s website, Cokinos explains that the reason for closing the magazine is part of a larger plague, infecting many on-campus projects: budget cuts. Besides losing funding for its managing editor, Isotope also lost several grants, which it had applied for. Samuel Howard, editorial assistant and graduate student, said the grant money could have kept the magazine afloat for another year. Thanks to donations and money from subscribers, Isotope had the money to publish its final issue.
Howard explained that one of the things that made Isotope unique was the merger of two seemingly opposite subjects.
“We didn’t just get creative writing submissions,” he said. “We were trying to bridge the gaps between science and literature. We were trying to show that science was an art.”
Aside from the occasional student submissions, Howard said the magazine received articles nationally and internationally, including those from professors and scientists. Cokinos compared Isotope to a “Venn diagram” of “nature, culture, science and muse,” the four words printed at the bottom of each issue. Among the subjects approached in the publication are “astronomy, artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, sexuality, urban ecosystems, restoration ecology, physics and math.”
A group of people who will be directly affected by the loss will be the graduate students of the English department. Isotope offered a yearly fellowship to graduate students that draws Howard to the magazine. After meeting with the editors, Howard was selected to be a fellow in 2008. After Isotope lost funding for its managing editor, Leslie Brown, Howard “stepped in to help get (Isotope’s) final issue ready for production,” he said. Howard said the experience was “great” and all the previous fellows “appreciated the opportunity,” as well as himself.
“It’s the best job I ever had,” he said. “I worked with great people. It was a pleasure while it was going and I’m sad it’s going away. It was great while it lasted.”
As for his relief, Cokinos writes that it comes for final certainty.
“After a year of swirling changes, indecision (much of that mine) and shifting budget priorities,” he writes, “… I am relieved that the situation has clarified and that the magazine won’t limp along without the support it deserves.”
Some of that support came from the English department, Caine School of the Arts, College of HASS, College of Science, College of Natural Resources, Marie Eccles Caine Foundation, Mountain West Center for Regional Studies, as well as a grant from the Utah Arts council and funding from the state of Utah and the National Endowment for the Arts. Isotope also had subscribers across the country.
Cokinos writes in his letter the proposal for an online version of Isotope. He wrote that, though “deeply appreciative of their kindness, I have reluctantly concluded that I do not wish to edit an online version of Isotope nor to impinge on the already scant time our faculty have during this era of looming course load increases and already overly large classes.”
Also, Cokinos expressed a deep satisfaction at the time he spent working with the authors of the submissions, especially scientists, calling the magazine a home for scientists writing poetry, stories and personal essays, as well as making visual art.
In his closing remarks, Cokinos thanked everyone for caring about the magazine, concluding with an old adage.
He wrote, “Better to go out on top, as they say.”
– k.vandyke@aggiemail.usu.edu