‘Isotope’ gets $5,000 grant
Isotope magazine received a prestigious grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
USU’s literary magazine, Isotope, magazine recently won a prestigious grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for fiscal year 2007. The $5,000 grant will be used to broaden circulation of the magazine.
Isotope is unique in that it was chosen from a slew of other journals to receive the grant even though it was a first-time applicant, a rare occurrence, said Managing Editor Leslie Brown.
“We knew it was probably a long shot since it was our first time to apply, and these grants are very competitive,” said Brown. She said after receiving the grant, she was “shocked, excited, relieved and very gratified!”
The grant money received will aid Isotope in expanding its circulation nationwide. Isotope currently has a circulation of about 1,000, pretty good for a literary magazine, but with the grant they hope to increase to 5,000. Their goal is to get Isotope into larger bookstores, such as Borders and Barnes & Noble, as well as making it available in more college communities and major cities.
Brown said completing the grant application was quite an obstacle in and of itself. She said the greatest challenges were the sheer quantity of paperwork that had to be completed and figuring out the budget and financial sections.
“I had never written a grant application of this magnitude or detail before,” she said. Brown said she was lucky to get help from a professional organization, the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses, as well as from the Literary Arts Specialist at the NEA, Amy Stolls.
Isotope magazine has already garnered significant notice nationwide. An increasing number of presses have been contacting Isotope considering excerpting material for their own compilations. Recently, works published in the magazine have appeared in books published by Beacon Press and the University of Arizona Press. In addition, selections from recent issues have been broadcasted on “The Naturalist’s Datebook” on Martha Stewart Living Radio.
According to editor Christopher Cokinos, part of the reason that Isotope has been so successful is because of its unique offering. It is a “Journal of Literary Nature and Science Writing,” offering poems and reflective essays by scientists about their own work and thoughts. It differs from other nature writing journals in that the selections are neither shallow celebration of the natural world nor elegy, but a deeper sort of writing.
“There are readers out there who are hungry for work about our relationship to the natural world and science that moves beyond simple black and white reactions,” Cokinos said.
It may seem that science writing and literary writing would have trouble fusing successfully, but Cokinos said, “At the fundamental level, they’re much closer than people realize. Writers are good observers. Scientists are good observers. Writers are curious about the world. Scientists are curious about the world.”
The result is an eclectic mix of emotional literature ranging from poems regarding children’s daydreams about whales being struck by underwater lightning to essays comparing human consumption of birth control pills to bio-accumulation of toxins in avian populations.
Cokinos said even with all the recent national attention, it has been a challenge to get Isotope recognized within the local community. Many students at USU don’t even realize that the magazine exists.
“It’s hard to get one’s own community to notice certain things,” he said. “I just want the university community to know we’re here.”
However, he said he is proud to be doing something to help USU become better known. “I don’t know of another publication that comes out of Utah State that consistently puts our name in front of a powerful and interesting audience.”
He said it provides “tremendous exposure” for the university as a whole.
“Isotope” is housed in the USU English Department.
-dpedwards@cc.usu.edu