Writ Large
We have up until now been almost totally discussing The Watermark, and literary publications. We have at several points in our narrative hinted at or danced around Writ Large. Writ Large has an interesting digital afterlife. It exists here on Facebook. Here on Instagram. Here on Wordpress And here on Linkedin. And yet despite these lost and abandoned digital architectures, there are no copies online. Writ Large, based solely on the three unique hard copies I found in early 2026 while looking for copies of The Watermark, quite bluntly, seems to be an even less-visible publication and even less supported endeavor both in terms of faculty, and student publications. I would learn only in the final drafts of my work on The Watermark that Writ Large was originally another campus publication, LUX. LUX was founded by students in the honors college in 2006. Crucially, the official UMass Boston Archives data is wrong. Explaining this requires us to take a detour from Writ Large for a while. Before that, let us say that LUX was an honor's college publication that became somehow caught up in inter-departmental conflict over ownership, and someone lost while someone else won, and so there was a rebranding of some kind. LUX and Writ Large are the same, much like Howth Castle became Waterfront which means that we are looking at a publication record stretching from 2006-2023, in theory, with only the 2016-2023 half even reasonably well documented.
I have found a copy of a photo of a cover in the digital collections of the UMass Archives. I have found two other photos of LUX online, from the Mass Media website, and an advertisement for its existence, but nothing else. I was prepared to submit an earlier draft of this book declaring that LUX was lost, more so than CHORD to my knowledge, And then something astoundingly lucky, and hopeful, happened.
When the (semi) final draft of this website was being brooded over, and I thought all was said and done, I was in the Teaching Fellow’s graduate office talking around this book to peers about The In-Between when I, on a whim, saw the drawer to a cabinet I had never opened. Because I am a naturally curious man, I opened it. Buried under 5 copies of The New Yorker, I found a copy of Volume #2, Issue #2 of LUX from the Spring of 2008. What a relief. And what a sorrowful thing that we are relieved to have scraps and fragments in a desk in a grad student office/lounge, but it is better than nothing.
I would like to discuss a Mass Media article from April 25th, 2006, talking about it. There is no photo on the website. It is just titled ‘LUX’.
We are, however, fortunate in that there is a Mass Media newspaper article from April 24th, 2006 talking about it. It has no photo. Its title is just ‘LUX’. I only found it because I scrolled down too fast on my mousepad at first, and had to scroll back up to re-find my place. I was more focused on the photos accompanying the article, looking for something to jump out.
The article I found from April 25th, 2006, written by Carolina Gomez is, until proven otherwise, the among the most complete accountings of the history of LUX which I was able to find, and I have pasted it in full below to help illustrate the point I am about to make.
On the first floor of the Campus Center, passed the Advising offices, you can find the Honors Program and will probably find a copy of the latest issue of LUX, the Honors Program newsletter. This venue of writing for students on campus is not yet widely known and it offers a great opportunity for students to showcase their research and talents.
It all started in the spring of 2005 when Devin Braham, English Major ’06, approached Rajini Srikanth, Honors Program Director and English Professor, asking for guidance for her future. Srikanth recommended starting a newsletter for the Honors Program. In order to conceive the newsletter Devin asked Lucienne Pierre, a friend she had met through classes to help her create it, Lucienne accepted and both became co-editors of this new writing outlet. As the idea of a newsletter grew stronger Devin and Lucienne had to think of a name for it. Professor James Willis, their teacher of Junior Colloquium at the time, suggested the name LUX. They both chose it because they thought it to be a good representation of what the Honors Program is all about, illumination. Devin says the name suggests enlightenment through learning, “not a divine enlightenment that descends from heaven, but an enlightenment that one works for and achieves by seeking it out.” That is the idea behind the title and it is very much representative of the newsletter itself.
From the beginning Devin and Lucienne decided that the newsletter would be published twice a semester, wanting writers from all subjects, from management to science to art. They wanted and still want the newsletter to have an article for everyone. “Perhaps every issue won’t have something that interests everyone, but with each new issue, I hope we can draw in more people by constantly offering a variety of articles,” Devin said.
Working for LUX has been a great learning experience for Devin and Lucienne. They have learned a lot about what it takes to publish a magazine, and that even on the small scale that LUX is published it takes a lot of work for two people. After the first issue came out, they soon realized they needed staff to help them. With the second issue of LUX they had the copyediting, layout and writing help of Senior Honors student Laura Paz. For them Laura was an immensely beneficial addition to the newsletter and continues to be.
As Devin looks forward to graduating from UMass this spring, her hope is that LUX becomes a permanent part of the Honors program and of the whole University community. Since both Devin and Lucienne will be graduating they have passed the torch to Anna Tsui, Econ Major ’08 who is now the new Editor In Chief. Anna believes that LUX and her were destined to be. Last year she had wanted to start her own newsletter, one that would deal with politics and would feature student opinions and voices that might not otherwise be heard, be it because they do not share mainstream campus ideas or because they feel too alienated. With LUX Anna is in charge of a newsletter that displays students’ minds and interests. The vision of LUX is that it should serve as a newsletter which allows students and faculty to showcase their research and talents in depth to the greater UMB community. “I believe it caters to an unfulfilled desire that many in the campus community have to really be able to understand what’s going on in the heart of the institution beyond surface reporting and really get a sense of what these people surrounding us are all about,” said Anna.
Anna has taken the step to make LUX a Registered Student Organization. She is now working on getting the Student Senate to fund LUX on a continual basis so that inconsistent or unreliable advertising income does not become a problem. As a student run and student promoted newsletter LUX is focused on serving the student population so they write about issues relevant to that experience. Last issues included an article on Dorms, Ethics and on a student research piece of the lack of Asian American coverage during Hurricane Katrina. The past issue included stories about the Vietnamese Down South, Queer Art and the Honors trip to South Africa. For the next issue they have a greater diversity of student writers, an interesting Opinion section as well as some Faculty research. Anna thinks that having faculty write for LUX is great because they have the knowledge and experience that students want to gain, also faculty are top in their field and their research is very current, poignant and interesting.
Having heard of the students initiatives on campus and student issues, Anna is trying to put together a Money edition, or Investment issue of LUX, showcasing student businesses, tips on investing money, scholarships, taxes, and monetary related issues that affect students on a daily basis and that can ultimately impact their education. This is pertinent for students who have to work half or full time to pay for tuition. LUX is accepting any ideas now from people who are interested, both outside and inside the Honors Program.
I would like to now share the metadata description of LUX’s one surviving copy from the UMass Boston archives.
Began in 2007? [note, the question mark is not placed by me]
Editor in chief: Lilly O'Flaherty, 2007-2011
Publishes student and faculty writing that sheds light on research, achievements, and current events.
Description based on: Spring 2010 ; title from cover.
What is deeply concerning about their metadata is that we have just confirmed that LUX magazine started in 2005, and can further verify this claim from the 2009 release of The Beacon, an Alumni jounral, on the Internet Archive (note that The Beacon / Beacons is the only remaining long-term consistent publication at UMass beyond the student newspaper, and it is not run by students). this release of Beacons states on page 44 that, quote, LUX, UMass Boston's student magazine published once a semester, was launched on May 13, providing the student body with a full-color glossy with stories about a student's trip to Peru, an interview with a profession skier-turned-honors student and a collection of six-word stories from students, professors and even some famous people. The magazine, which used to be an honor's newsletter, relaunched in 2006. The release party was held in the Harbor Art Gallery. Further research into archival holdings pulls up a searchable document titled ‘University of Massachusetts Boston publications, 1964-2012’, which lists a date of ‘May 2006’ followed by a dash. Unless this date is not related to publication at all, but maybe the issue they hold? This argument collapses entirely on arrival when considering the ‘Began in 2007?” line and the fact the item description lists the item as the Spring 2010 issue. Which is it?
Furthermore, they list a publication date as ‘semiannual’ despite our data listing a publication rate of twice a semester, and that in their first semester they did put out two confirmed copies on a staff comparable to what David did in late-stage Watermark. But, perhaps publication patterns changed by the time of the issue they hold. Data is unclear.
I find it deeply hard to believe that the magazine started in 2005, according to the Mass Media, and waited until 2007 to start publishing. The memory lingers, but we have somehow found a journal better documented yet in worse overall condition than Writ Large, which at least yielded 2 copies of 2 different issues, with a potential 3rd in existence. LUX has one copy for what looks to be (but cannot be confirmed) a lifespan similar to Writ Large with potentially similar publication patterns. The key difference is that LUX is 3 jpegs, and one advertisement I was able to find in Volume #19 (2010) of The Watermark on the UMass Boston Archive’s ScholarWorks portal (!), with two potential hard copies confirmed to exist. Tragically, both existing copies are the same, one held by me, and the other held by the Special Collections archive under incorrect taxonomy. There is no variation in the surviving record, beyond we now have an ability to confirm was active publication until 2010, with Spring 2006 being the alleged start date, and by Spring 2008 there was a Volume 2, Issue #2 released. Now, let us return to Writ Large.
Indeed, looking solely on our issues, Volume #3 Issue #1 has nine pieces in it. Two are from the Editor-In-Chief, Lucas Goren. As a side-note, Lucas is listed as a Non-Fiction Editor in the 2014 Volume #22 copy of The Watermark, indicating there was cross-pollination between staff there that saw editorial experience mixing and self-reinforcing across cohorts. I did manage to find Lucas on LinkedIn and sent him a message, given that he might quite frankly be one of the only remaining reachable student nodes of information about Writ Large. At the initial time of writing, he did give an enthusiastic response and showed a willingness to answer my questions. I was still waiting on his response to the questions I sent in February of 2026. By April of 2026 I had given up on waiting for a reply.
Frustratingly, I did manage to find one other listed Editor-in-Chief for Writ Large on LinkedIn, and received this message every time I tried to click on their name: The profiles of members who are outside your network have limited visibility. To access more member profiles, continue to grow your network. Moving on.
The acknowledgements tabs each surviving copy before Fall 2022 begin with messages thanking Donna Neal.
Furthermore, when one looks at the Fall 2022 release, which was shockingly accessible in student spaces (Please see Part #4 for a small list) we can paint a rather disturbing picture. 10 pieces acknowledged in the Table of Contents. Two from the then current Managing Editor Riley Hammond. One full double-page ‘reminder’, which consists of a tweet-length wall of text. There are seven unique contributors to this magazine volume. Consistently low numbers between 2014 and 2022 corroborate earlier statements about slimness, but show a concerning level of now documented consistency across eight years. This being said, it is the copy with the most survivors. We will expand on this, at the end of this chapter.
A result of this slimness is that this essay will be significantly briefer than the rest.
The magazines themselves are formatted like traditional magazines aesthetically and physically, and are saddle stitched. Slimmer in overall content than The Watermark it had a decidedly more aesthetic design. With copies of The Watermark, one got the idea they were attempting to mimic prestige venues like Agni or Ploughshares or Salamander with their genre selection of fiction, poetry, art, and nonfiction. Writ Large had to do more with less, and as a result feels almost experimental in comparison as a physical product constrained by its genre as a non-fiction publication.
I would suggest, with great hesitation, that Writ Large was the ugly duckling of campus publications. Circling back to Questionnaire #1 with Katrina, there was little support for it. The Watermark got a fighting chance because it predominantly focused on fiction, which is something that an MFA department could get behind even in an informal, advisory role. Writ Large did not have this luxury, because the non-fiction element seems focused on other projects and publications.
For example, The Composition wing of the English department has an online journal called Undercurrents, which has gone unmentioned up until now because it adopts the MFA approach that we see with Breakwater. It is managed directly by faculty like the Composition Program Director and is actively mentioned, engaged with, and promoted within the Composition Department.
I know this because I am at the time of writing a Composition instructor on campus, and have used it in my classes for my students. It is not a submission-based journal, but a nomination-based journal, meaning works are selected by instructors of English 101 like myself and those selected are referred to as ‘honorees’ and not ‘contributors’. It is framed as a kind of award for academic excellence instead of an unpaid publication in undergrad.
As it stands, one is emailing me about being a volunteer reader on the selections committee, and the other has faded from institutional memory so fast that, in a span of only about 10 years, it might as well have never existed at all, save for the journal description on the UMass Boston ‘Student Media’ page which says the following;
Writ Large is a non-fiction magazine that publishes academically researched op-eds at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. This means that we want your opinion, but we want it to be backed up with facts. Every article is accompanied by artwork that matches what the article is talking about. Each edition has its own theme.
I figured the best case option for finding surviving copies was fellow students who oversaw their own network of publications and infrastructures, after re-reading Katrina’s questionnaire. I was wrong, and it still stings. As a publication and a piece of campus history, I believe Writ Large matters. Clearly, the university also believes Writ Large matters because they keep advertising its existence on official websites. Repeatedly, with built-in links taking you to dead websites that I had tried to get answers from the comments sections of and was met with silence by.
What is especially concerning about this, is that when one compares Volume #3 Issue #1 2016 release to the un-numbered Fall 2022 release, you can see that over time the genre drifted until there was some broad thematic nonfiction overlap, but clearly Writ Large was urgently trying to survive by process of adaptation. Reading the 2016 release, one understands that, yes, this is a nonfiction op-ed journal. Fall 2022 however features what looks like nonfiction in poetry format, photography, and art. It carries the form of the earlier Writ Large publications, and remarkable physical consistency and density compared to Watermark, but it just isn’t the same when reading it, it’s the strangest thing.
Like adaptation done too slowly, which haunts, because if we look solely at the number of surviving copies in circulation, they were close to approaching a nonfiction theme but genre flexible approach that could have helped them survive. More copies of the Fall 2022 issue existed (before I took them) in random spaces on campus than anywhere else. It just was not fast enough.
Writ Large: Issue 1, Volume 1
It was a fit of desperation which compelled me to check the generic student-facing library search bar function and not the digitized special collections portion of the library in search of copies of Writ Large. And it hit like a bolt of lighting through my system, to recognize that the UMass Boston Healey Library 4th floor Periodicals section had a copy of Volume #1, Issue #1 from 2014 sitting there on their shelves. I am not embarrassed to admit, I sat there for a minute kind of in shock before a near urgent excitement overcame me. It was just sitting there, on the shelving unit next to the librarians desks no one went up to on the lefthand side of the room. One floor below the official Special Collections archive of the University of Massachusetts Boston. It was an open air configuration, meaning one could stand from in the middle of the periodicals shelving, and see the literal front door to the archive on the 5th floor. The raw absurdity of it all eventually forced a laugh of pure disbelief.
At the time of writing, due to work obligations, coursework, and teaching obligations, I have been unable to verify if it is actually there or not, but it is a documented university claim that it is held on the 4th floor periodicals section of Healy Library, directly within sight of the 5th floor archive’s special collections.
Please see Artifact #2 for proof of this interaction. I did, in late April, manage to follow up regarding my outreach to the library for coordination. I went in one Sunday morning and, Frustratingly, I was trying to figure out acquisition policy for the periodicals section and the woman behind the front desk / book checkout space kept discussing how I would have to submit something through my department. I think she thought I wanted to submit to the journal, despite my clarification that I was working on "a research project". At any rate, the submission suggestion was odd given that both Writ Large and Waterfront are by now several years out of print. It reinforces some of the themes throughout this website of poor coordination / no coordination connecting student creative output to the mechanisms of preservation and distribution: there seems to be no unifying policy accessible. Writ Large printed copies, the copies circulated, and now the copies are held here or there. We have documented this pattern for The Watermark via the Archival Feudalism framework found on another page under this tab. When I further asked about why the volume listed on the website might be missing, but the volumes on the shelf might not be listed online (unless it is user error on my part?) she insisted on me sending them an email with the item number of the missing volume so they could try to find the missing volume. I suppose theft or misplacement is always a valid answer, but I found it odd that the periodicals / newspaper section was flooded, for lack of a better term), with Chinese language newspapers all stamped with stickers of library ownership, but little to no student publications. I understand they are potentially difficult to capture in the moment, but not even back copies of the student newspaper were present, and hard copies existed on a distribution stand right outside the library door. However, the news papers are at least held and digitized by the archives themselves (please see Questionnaire #1 for details).
The person behind the desk answered no questions about acquisition policy, which could have been directed by a higher authority than her but if this is the case her responses were oddly definitive rather than "contact so-and-so". But I had, at any rate, collected the data I wanted to find. Now we know there is one unrelated rare and undocumented volume of Writ Large floating around a newspaper stand, as well as one copy of the last volume of The Watermark. When I asked about getting student publications donated to the library, I was told they were currently not accepting any donations. I took the answers I received and left the library, resolving that between the conversation and the Artifact #2 outreach email, I had gathered as much valuable data as I could from this point of access, and would have to re-route back through individual departments, the archives themselves, and former editors.