Students unite to create new Spanish-language literary mag.

Steven McCutcheon '07 was working on a novel in Mexico last summer when he had a revelation.

McCutcheon, who grew up speaking both Spanish and English, "ended up writing things in Spanish, and, when I tried to redraft my ideas into English, it didn't work out," he said.

This realization prompted the idea that certain literary works needed to be expressed in Spanish, he said.

When he returned to the United States in the fall, his idea became Alumbremos, a new Spanish-language literary magazine.

The University has never had an undergraduate publication written in Spanish. That was the attraction for the four founding students: McCutcheon, the group's president, Fiction Editor Camillie Landrón '07, Poetry Editor Emily Woodman-Maynard '05 and Nonfiction Editor Roberto Peña '07, who is also a 'Prince' contributor.

Dan Benediktson '07 handles the web site, technology issues and publicity.

"Considering all the social, political and cultural outlets for Hispanics that we have here at Princeton, it's nice to be able to complement that with a purely artistic and literary outlet . . . because I think that's one thing that's been missing here for too long," McCutcheon said.

Previous attempts to provide literary outlets in Spanish have failed.

"I liked Steven's idea because at one point I had approached professors in the creative writing department and asked if they had thought about Spanish-language creative writing classes," Woodman-Maynard said. "It wasn't something the department was interested in doing."

Alumbremos will provide "a place for people to get their work out there, and also it might convince Princeton to get a Spanish creative writing class," Landrón said.

The magazine will come out yearly, she said, with the first issue appearing in spring of 2005.

The format will focus on fiction and poetry, but "we're also accepting essays . . . on a variety of different intellectual subjects, and also interviews," McCutcheon said.

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Eventually, the magazine hopes to include translations into English of little-known Spanish works, "so we could introduce those works to Anglophone readers," McCutcheon said.

The creative material will be submitted entirely by undergraduates.

The group has applied to the USG for recognition as a student group, but the process of starting a new artistic organization is about much more than getting approved.

The student leaders of Alumbremos are drumming up support through Acción Puertoriqueña, the Chicano Caucus and even other universities.

Landrón has been contacting department heads at Harvard, Yale, the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia, NYU and Cornell to invite students there to submit.

"We've been getting the word out and seeing how people respond. We've gotten a lot of positive responses," she said.

Spanish literature is not a new interest for the founding students.

All four "miembros del consejo editorial" — editorial board members — have rich backgrounds reading and writing in Spanish.

Peña and Landrón grew up in Spanish-speaking homes, and McCutcheon grew up bilingual. Woodman-Maynard is a Spanish-Portuguese major, and studied abroad for a year in Buenos Aires.

"Spanish has become really important for me, [not only] as a object of study, but also as a way to approach literature," Woodman-Maynard said.

Peña said the difference between writing in Spanish and in English comes down to audience.

"It's more of a question of whom I'm trying to convey these ideas to. That's why I think the lack of a Spanish literary magazine is really regrettable, because there are ideas that cannot be expressed in the 'Nassau Literary Review.' There's an audience not being reached," he said.

All four editors are excited about the magazine's prospects.

"I hope that in the future it grows to be such an important part of Princeton extracurricular culture that people are proud of being published there," Landrón said.

Woodman-Maynard shared a similar sentiment. "I hope we can get people to see the importance of Spanish as language, not only to . . . recent immigrants, but as a language with such a deep literary tradition," she said.

McCutcheon had a more simple request. "We really hope people will be as excited about it as we are," he said.