Spires Intercollegiate Arts and Literary Magazine

Spires is an intercollegiate arts and literary magazine established in 1994 by undergraduates at Washington University in St. Louis. The first issue of Spires was published in the Spring of 1995. Spires accepts submissions of fiction, poetry, and art from undergraduates everywhere. Spires is supported by the Washington University Student Union.

Spires was originally founded as a chapter based organization. Spires had longtime chapters at Columbia University, Tulane University, Yeshiva University, and DePauw University. Each chapter would contribute submissions and resources for printing, and the printed magazine would be distributed at each school. This type of organization made sense when the magazine was started in 1994, when the world wide web was still in its infancy. The magazine has now moved to a much simpler plan whereby artists individually send in submissions to Washington University where the magazine is then printed and published on the web in pdf format. The last chapters participating in the magazine were at Tulane and Yeshiva, and the last mention of chapters in the magazine was in the Fall 2004 issue.

Like many literary magazines, Spires sponsors a speaker series. Amy Hempel (author of Reasons to Live and, most recently, The Dog of the Marriage) visited in Fall 2005, and Paul Lafarge (Haussmann, or the Distinction and The Artist of the Missing) spoke in Spring of 2005. In the past, Spires has helped sponsor on-campus lectures by Seamus Heaney, Kurt Vonnegut, Neil Gaiman, Dave Eggers and others.

External links and references

* [http://www.spiresmagazine.org Official Website]
* [http://aria.cse.wustl.edu/~history/SpiresTemp/index.php Current and Previous Issues]
* [http://sugroups.wustl.edu/~spires/submit.html How To Submit]
* [http://aria.cse.wustl.edu/~history/SpiresTemp/techWriting/SpiresOpProc2ndEdPLJ.pdf Spires Operating Procedures Manual-everything anyone would ever want to know about Spires]