A (re)Introduction

Several decades ago, before George Fox University had a football stadium, before students could dance, before rated R-movies could even be viewed behind closed doors in dorm rooms: before all these symbols of a modern college campus, there was still a campus literary journal, called The Wineskin. 

Back then, in the 1980s, The Wineskin was mimeographed onto white paper, stapled together, with a cover made of colored card stock, so that it looked little like a book. (A cheaply-made book, no doubt, but a book nonetheless.) 

Yet having a poem or short story printed in The Wineskin had some cache among the intellectual set at the college: those English and philosophy majors who gathered at a cafeteria table each evening after dinner, sipping their tea and talking big ideas. 

At least I think they were talking big ideas, but I don’t know for sure, since though I was an English major, no one ever invited me to join. (Don’t worry: I’m not bitter about this. Not much, at least.) But these were the folks whose heady poems appeared each spring in The Wineskin, and as an aspiring writer, I treasured my copy of the journal, taking it back to my dorm to thumb through its pages, knowing that the words were written by the hippest people on campus. 

For almost 40 years, the George Fox University Wineskin has featured the literary and artistic work of countless students, some of whom went on to lustrous careers, as New York Times best-selling authors, and Oregon Book Award winners, and well-loved school teachers, passing their passion for writing on to new generations of students. 

The consistently high quality of work published in The Wineskin has been a well-kept secret within the boundaries of our Newberg campus. But this year, we have decided to change that. 

In a disastrous year when very little seems normal, The Wineskin is refashioning itself, becoming not just a literary magazine for a small Christian university, but a publication open to skilled writers everywhere, focused on the intersections of faith, art, and the contemporary culture(s) in which we find ourselves.

Our new online journal promises to publish high quality poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and art, sharing the good work that creatives are doing to express the wonders of our Creator. Each quarterly issue will invite writer submissions around a particular theme, and the theme for this fall is Interruption.

Perhaps obviously, The Wineskin is named after the gospels, where Jesus says “no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins, the wine will spill, and the wineskins will be ruined” (Luke 5:37-38). This passage seems especially prescient now, as we have created a new vessel for your new stories, your new poems, your new essays. 

Check out our submission guidelines for more information, and join our email list serve to get updates from us about The Wineskin and other writing opportunities.

Melanie Mock, Wineskin Faculty Advisor