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UNH 'Fictioneers' featured in pilot journal

By ADAM COOK, Staff Writer

A new journal has made its way to the University of New Hampshire in an attempt to let students publish their own pieces of fiction.

Samantha Granville, a junior English major with a writing minor, created and piloted an independent study fiction journal called The Fictioneer as a means for students to get themselves published.

Adam Cook/ STAFF  The Fictioneer founder, Samantha Granville leafs through a freshly printed copy of the journal. The junior English major worked tirelessly over the past semester to create UNH’s first journal exclusively for student fiction writing.
Adam Cook/ STAFFThe Fictioneer founder, Samantha Granville leafs through a freshly printed copy of the journal. The junior English major worked tirelessly over the past semester to create UNH’s first journal exclusively for student fiction writing.

“I was trying to start a new organization for a journal but it took too long to start,” Granville said. “I wanted to create a space where writers like me can publish stories of worlds that we have created.”

The Fictioneer was started by Granville to incorporate student publications with purely fictional content. She confirmed there was nothing else like it on campus.

“It is a good time in my school career to take on a project like this,” Granville said. “I worked every single day.”

The journal itself is 100 pages long and contains 10 different stories that have been voted on by a group of 13 people on the staff board. Granville was surprised to see so many original entries as she was unable to market the idea of the journal to the student body due to the time-consuming process of making the journal into an organization.

Clark Knowles, a UNH lecturer called Granville and her classmates ‘Fictioneers’ when addressing them as a whole in her intermediate fiction writing class. This is where Granville said the name of the journal came from.

The Fictioneer was awarded a grant to start its publishing from Ken Fuld, the dean of the College of Liberal Arts. This gave Granville a $500 budget to work with for her product. Granville said she always wanted to get into publishing; therefore, this grant presented an opportunity for her to pursue that idea.

“I was just hoping that this is something that people want to pick up,” Granville said. “It relieves stress.”

Granville said she owes a lot to Wendy VanDellon, assistant director to the University Writing Programs and a graduate student at UNH who became advisor for The Fictioneer. Granville said if it was not for VanDellon, this journal would never have happened.

Tom Berry, a sophomore philosophy major with a creative writing minor, had his piece “Blanks” published in the journal.

“I wanted to write about how obsessive people are about [self] image,” Berry said about his accepted piece.

In Berry’s piece, a man is obsessed with his own image that ends up being tainted due to an accident. The recovery process leads the man to doing unspeakable things to try to recover his old image.

“This is a great opportunity for anyone to write,” Berry said.

Berry hopes that the journal will continue and would like to write and submit more of his work.

Plans for future release of The Fictioneer have already been made. Granville will try to get more writers to join the team for next publication.

Copies of the journal can be found around Hamilton Smith.

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