Volume 28 is officially out as of right now! You can check it out within the “Current Issue” tab!
Thank you to everyone who put in the work for this volume! All of your time, effort, energy and creativity is very much appreciated!
Author: uwlcatalyst
Catalyst Origins: “You Are The Universe” by Emily Weseljak
Emily Weseljak is a junior as the University of Wisconsin – La Crosse pursuing a degree in English Education. She is on the leadership team for the English Honor Society, Sigma Tau Delta, and a member of the Education Honor Society, Kappa Delta Pi. Outside of reading and writing she enjoys soccer, dancing, and watching movies.
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Spring semester of my sophomore year at UW-La Crosse, I was tasked with creating and refining five short texts for my creative writing class. Later at night than it should have been, I sat at my dorm’s desk staring out the window at the nightlife of the university with the intention to begin the third possible piece for this portfolio.
It was a Friday night and my search for inspiration was seemingly interrupted by the laughing and yelling groups of friends passing by my window. However, as I looked outside, their noise served as an intriguing contrast to the clear view I had of the calm night sky. I remember, all at once, it seemed the harsh juxtaposition swirled together and prompted me to become inspired by the shared depths of relationships and the universe.
I wanted to discuss a relationship which would be able to properly encompass and pair with the complexity of the universe as something beyond human control. Eventually, I landed on the concept of soulmates. I hoped to play with the idea of the universe serving as a connecting force between two people reaching out for each other. My original inspiration stemmed from conveying the sensations of what would happen if you could feel the universe’s crackling energy pulling someone else’s hand into your own. Throughout my writing process I built on this by focusing on pairing raw emotions with aesthetic descriptions in order to evoke feelings of yearning for deep connection and the innocent hope of someone out there being perfect for you.
I am so glad to be able to share this as my first published piece and I hope you enjoy it!
Catalyst Origins: Death Roe by Meg Alaimo
Megan Alaimo is a senior at UW-La Crosse studying English: Writing and Rhetoric. Her poetry can be found in UWM at Waukesha’s 2021 and 2022 editions of The Windy Hill Review and Vol. 27 of The Catalyst. She is currently residing in Rochester, MN with her loving partner.
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While in a Killarney hotel room, I learned that Roe v Wade was overturned. I watched the news in shock and brief denial But mainly, all I could really think was what could this mean for me? What could it mean for all women in the US?
I recall cracking open my poetry journal after dinner that night, and writing on top of the page the title: Death Roe. The phrase was, of course, a play on “death row.” Because a) Roe v. Wade was dead, long gone, and b) if Roe v. Wade was (and is) gone, effectively this would send many women to death as they won’t be able to get the care they need. It hurts to know that my thought process was correct.
I sat with the title and my thoughts on the matter until I finally wrote the meat of Death Roe on the plane back home. I scribbled down my confusion, rage and uncertainty; I did not know what life would look like once I got out of the sky and down on US tarmac. The first draft was simply a therapy session, a way to get these complex feelings out of my head and somewhere physical.
The version in The Catalyst is very similar to the original minus some words and two meandering stanzas that bogged down the piece. I was very hesitant to share Death Roe with others, but in hindsight, I’m glad I did so as I feel it’s a subject matter that needs to be talked about.
Current Issue and Archives in Transition
As of March 2023, the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse has discontinued its contract with ISSUU, the platform that supports our current publications and our digital archives on this site. We’ve been assured that a new platform is on its way, and the transition will happen in time for the Spring ’23 issue to go ahead without interruption. For now, though, we’re sorry to say that our current and past issues are unavailable for viewing.
Esther Hammen on “Smile”
Esther Hammen is one of the new editors of The Catalyst for Spring 2023. Her prose poem “Smile” appears on page 32 of the fall issue. Esther had this to say about how that piece came to exist:
This past summer I worked as the Children’s Summer Event Planner for a library, and so I had to advertise our events at several different local family-oriented functions. I grew up in the small town this library is located in, and while I attended these functions, I saw a lot of people I recognized. One of the functions stood out to me in particular, this being the one that inspired “Smile”. Two former teachers from high school stopped by my booth to say hi. The first one was glad to see how different I was. In high school I rarely spoke unless spoken to, and if I did speak, I usually had something dry or generally unpleasant to say (unless you found my sort of humor amusing, in which it would be received with a small chuckle and a shake of the head). But at this event, of course, I was all smiles. The second teacher was someone who had committed a crime unknown to me at the time of the event. When I wrote this a month later, I was well-informed of what he had done to some of my friends/fellow classmates. This was someone I trusted very much and was very close to. This led to the culmination of the piece, that being the last few lines, where I let myself be angry, as well as hopefully funny, and maybe a bit chilling.
Volume 26 is Live!
Check it out under the “Current Issue” tab!
Thank you to everyone who contributed time, energy, and creativity to this volume.
Not so Dreadful Deadlines
As we find ourselves at November 1st we also find ourselves 30 days away from the Fall 2022 submission deadline. Whether you dread them or embrace them, deadlines can serve as a motivational marker that says, “hey, it’s now or never.”
Procrastination plagues the best of us and thus deadlines can actually play a pervasive role in the creative process.
Creative thinkers often wait for inspiration to strike, but a deadline can keep creative thinkers on task. If the deadline says, “we need this in a week,” the crunch time can stimulate creative minds and get them started right away.
Creative thinkers also tend to repeatedly tweak and change their work. Setting a firm date and/or time for completion can curb the perfectionist instincts and force us to deliver.
Trust your abilities as artists to deliver on a deadline. The looming submission deadline of November 31st doesn’t have to scare you! Use it as a tool to get motivated.
I work in the Writing Center on campus here at UWL and we have a little saying that goes, “write something today even if it sucks.” One small step might put you in the right headspace to continue the creativity.
Happy creating!
-By Devany Bauer for The Catalyst
Flynn and Letting it Flow
I’ve been inspired recently, by the eerie nature of early October, to take a stab into some spooky stories. One of my favorite authors of all time is Gillian Flynn. Her novels Gone Girl, Dark Places, and Sharp Objects all highlight the cynical sides of humanity with psychological puzzles, satanic cult hysteria, and cycles of abuse.
In an interview with Noah Charney in 2012 Flynn states, “I’m old-fashioned. The stuff I love isn’t about gotcha scares, and gore doesn’t frighten me much either. It’s that sense of dread, and the sense that characters have gotten swept up in a current they can’t control, leading them toward something awful and dark.”
Flynn, like most writers, has been asked about her writing process. As a mother of two, Flynn states “I couldn’t write anywhere around the house anymore. I needed a lair.” And that’s exactly what she got. In the same 2012 interview with Charney, Flynn describes her writing space as “straight out of Silence of the Lambs” in the basement/root cellar of her Victorian home. Here Flynn likes to let it flow. “I wish I could plot more efficiently or stick to an outline, but I just can’t. Partly it’s because, for me, the plot is the least intriguing part of a book. I start writing because of certain characters or themes or events I want to explore, but I’m often not sure what form that will take. So I do float along a bit,” says Flynn.
Personally, I’ve felt tied down and restricted by outlines. I tend to find outlines more suitable for academic writing and like Flynn find it rewarding to let it flow when working on creative pieces. I encourage you all to do what works for you!
Happy reading, happy writing, and happy Halloween.
~by Devany Bauer for The Catalyst
Contributor Taylor Trost
Taylor Trost, a Communication Studies major with minors in Leadership Development, Professional and Technical Writing, and Digital Media Design, was published in the 23rd issue of The Catalyst. Trost submitted her work to The Catalyst upon the suggestion to do so from her creative writing professor.
Her piece was titled “Foamy Mouths and Tattooed Backs.” This piece was a reflection on her freshman year experiences in dorm bathrooms. Isn’t it odd that such close bonds can be built in a bathroom?
Trost says she is a creative writer at heart and really enjoys the way writing gives her an opportunity to express her emotions and create something she is proud of. Currently she is crocheting, painting, and “putting forth the occasional short story or poem” when she feels “the creative juices flowing.”
In the future Trost hopes to pursue graduate school in order to become a professor of Communication Studies. She would also love to compile her poems into a book someday as well as write a young adult book.
Her advice for other writers is to embrace opportunities to “cut some lines of poems and stories because it may benefit the piece overall. Killing your darlings isn’t always a bad thing.”
~by Devany Bauer for The Catalyst
An Interview with Carly Frerichs
Happy May, Catalyst readers! My name is Katie Cox and I am one of the editors of the Catalyst. This month I had the chance to interview Carly Frerichs, a UW-L alumnus who now works at the local Driftless Writing Center. She was able to help the Catalyst transfer to the online format that it is today, and for that, we are incredibly grateful! I hope you enjoy her words of encouragement and advice for fellow writers as well as the love she has for literature.
KC: Tell us a little bit about yourself! For those who don’t know you, what have you been up to the past few years, and what is your connection to UW LaCrosse?
CF: I was a student at UW-L in the English department (graduated in 2014, which, how are we already in 2022??) In my second semester of freshman year, the editors of The Catalyst were both seniors and graduating. I volunteered to take the reins, not knowing what a big impact it would have on my next few years. That first year, and into the second year, we (the English Club, as The Catalyst was supported by them at the time) fundraised through bake sales and grants to print The Catalyst. That quickly became unsustainable, but the current online version was created through SharePoint, which is not an ideal website structure for a print product. Wanting to merge the best parts of print (mostly the ability to have a layout and a shareable “product”) and the lack of funding needed for a free website, I set out in my Junior year to set up the WordPress site. Working on The Catalyst was a wonderful experience and really lit the fire in me to support and be involved in local art.
Since graduation, I have been mostly seeing where life takes me. I have worked editing, coding, marketing, graphic design, nonprofit administration, and I currently bake and cook at The Root Note as well as run my own at-home bakery. Much of the courage to follow paths that might not be what I had in any plan, but are paths that bring me joy, has come from writing. Through writing, and specifically how writing taught me to trust myself and to see the world through different lenses, emboldened me to take risks, push myself outside my comfort zone, and follow the paths that make me happiest.
KC: How did you get into writing? What makes you passionate about it?
CF: I had come to UW-L with the idea that I would do a year of gen-eds, then transfer to Madison for pre-med. Writing was never something that I was encouraged to think about seriously. Since elementary school, I have been a writer, though never called myself that. I was always coming up with half stories and a few lines of poetry here and there. Most of the time, I was my way to work through what I didn’t really understand about life. A way to talk out ideas to myself, figure out who I was (and who I want to be), and to actively participate in the things I loved. I have always loved music, but never had much success learning an instrument and had no access growing up to voice lessons. I always loved skateboard culture, but grew too fast and was too lanky and awkward to feel comfortable on a board with skate parks or really any place to practice anywhere nearby. But I could write about them. I could come up with stories about people doing the things that fascinated me. Soon, as I went through middle and high school, I started writing about relationships and social dynamics. Later in high school, I started working through my family connection with alcohol abuse, my own growing and then-undiagnosed mental health struggles, and my growing awareness of the world (both the beauty and the struggle). Writing helped me to work through existence, but never did I think it would be something that I would formally study until taking an intro class at UW-L. I loved it. I loved talking to people about books, helping others improve their writing, and having a community of other people who were also voracious readers and who also understood the world through literature.
The continuing passion with writing, if pinpointing it to one thing, would be my love of the sound of language. It’s one reason I love music so much. I don’t even have to know the words for some songs, if done well, because I can get lost in just the consonants and vowels. Even my favorite literature all seems best being spoken out loud. Most of the books I read, I prefer reading via audiobook if there is a version with a quality narration. The sounds of the words, how it all weaves into meaning, how each word leads right into the next and builds a vision for the listener. It’s what I find really magical about writing.
KC: What kind of work do you do with the Driftless Writing Center?
CF: I have filled many roles with the DWC. I joined as the Project Manager of the Stories from the Flood project. For the Stories from the Flood project, we collected stories from community members around the Coon Creek and Kickapoo watersheds, where 2018 saw record flooding that devastated much of the area. The project aimed to preserve the stories in historical archives to be used in watershed research, to collect information for a findings report to send to local representatives to inform flood response, and to help the community share their experiences to use their stories to grow and heal together.
Since the project’s completion, I have joined the DWC board, spending some time as secretary and then interim president. Currently, I serve on the tech committee. Early in the pandemic, I helped to get the DWC up and running with Zoom events to be able to continue serving our driftless writers community, and we continue to work on navigating the digital landscape as well as working on a plan to open up to in-person events.
KC: As a writer, what does your process look like? Is there a specific routine you usually stick to or does it change depending on what you are working on?
CF: My process is incredibly flexible. I have always been a writer and always will be, but sometimes it takes a back burner to other interests and passions. To prevent burnout, I tend to rotate my passions to be able to follow all of my curiosities and interests. But even when I am in a lull with my writing, I am always an avid reader (or listener) of literature. And I take advantage of my “downtime” to collect ideas, concepts, even just individual lines for a poem. I have a notepad app on my phone absolutely bursting with little snippets of my thoughts over the last few months. When I get the itch, I will start going through, finding connections, building storylines, and writing.
KC: Do you have any recommendations for aspiring writers?
CF: Useful recommendations is a tough ask. Everyone is so different and it feels like too much of a copout to say “everyone is different; find what works for you.” But it’s really true. Everyone works differently. Really listen to yourself and understand yourself to find your own rhythm.
And be kind to yourself. If you are in a rut and don’t write for months, it will never help to pine over lost time. Sometimes we have to take a break. And sometimes we have to push through. Knowing what your life at this moment calls for is an art, an art which will take time to develop. But be kind to yourself first. If you hate something you wrote, give it time. Don’t delete it. Come back to it later. Chances are there is something there. You may have to completely deconstruct your original thought, but you wrote it for a reason. Something in it meant something to you. Find the truth, find the little nugget of meaning you are working through. Writing is so highly personal and raw; it’s an act of courage to open up your creativity to its fullest. So acknowledge that courage and, even if you don’t think you wrote to your standard, give yourself some credit for writing life on a page.
The Catalyst 