Disclaimers and Acknowledgements 

Firstly, this research project is an independently produced reconstruction of The Watermark, and several other student journals as well. It is also a case study in how student publication ecosystems collapse, fragment, and survive. In fact, institutional records and digital archives present a simplified version of reality that does not capture the material and social complexity of small-scale publishing systems. Given the nature of this project, it is only proper that there be no declared end point as volumes are still missing, data is unprocessed, and research is not conducted despite assembling a near-complete run of physical books across multiple journals, magazines, and zines now in my private possession. To that goal, I have added an updates page which documents discovers, publications, or moments in real time which are important to the development of this project. These updates may, at times, contradict found work on other pages, as it takes time to edit such a large body of knowledge and bring it all into alignment. 

Originally, it was going to be a book, but instead was adapted into a website for both ease of access and because the digital humanities web model suited the vision better than a linear cover-to-cover format. The exigence, the moment which compelled the creation of this body of writing, was the recognition that this record did not exist anywhere else, and the chance to construct it was rapidly closing in a series of converging problems:

• The students who worked on it all were almost off campus and graduated, making it difficult to collect testimonies and histories of their time with this publication.  

• The books themselves were beginning to disappear from campus into private collections, lounges, and unlabeled storage boxes. 

• There was no concentrated source of first-hand accounts from student editors. 

• The University of Massachusetts Boston was acting like The Watermark had not ended in 2022-2023. It is still listed as active on the UMass Boston Student Activities website. It is still listed as "ongoing" on the ScholarWorks website as of April 2026. It is also listed as still active on the university Wikipedia page. 

     This all combined into the recognition that the situation required direct intervention. The University did not know I had / was doing this until I showed up with the completed project and started asking people if they wanted to, quote, see something interesting. 

More importantly than that I must, before you begin to explore this website in earnest, express my sincerest gratitude. Firstly, to who was on campus in The Watermark staff and left copies of the magazine in stacks in the graduate lounge waiting to be found. Without that act, there would be remarkably little we could do to preserve the memory of The Watermark. Special gratitude must be given to the staff at the University of Massachusetts Boston archives who were responsible for digitizing Volumes 1-22 of The Watermark, the entirety of Howth Castle and Wavelengths for free viewing by the public. Without their creating a searchable online database this work would not have come along as quickly as it did. Their work is essential towards preserving university history like what we are discussing. In specific, several people at the archives was very kind and generous in our conversations about the archives and The Watermark. 

 I must thank all the people who I spoke with about student publications on UMass Boston after hunting them down, even if they did not, in the end, agree to go on record for this work. And, even if they never responded to my outreach attempts at all. Many of them worked on The Watermark some 20 or even 30-ish years ago, but still proudly listed it as an accomplishment worthy of remembrance online. Without their dedication and enthusiasm, it is highly, highly doubtful The Watermark would have ever existed in the first place, let alone all the other journals we occasionally discuss. Their bemused curiosity and acknowledgement of time spent on the Watermark in the face of my questioning however many years later is proof that this journal still matters. 

I must, personally, give my thanks to two professors at UMass Boston in my department. One who not only took an interest in my weirdly obsessive energy about student publications and small press ecosystems, but also took time from her day to talk to me about all my weird little projects from time to time. This mattered tremendously to me. I must also thank another professor in my department, who taught me the word 'ecocompostion' over email right before a major vacation. It provided a workable framework almost at once, and at once triggered a lot of my intellectual curiosity about books-as-objects, which snowballed into this project. I have not named them, but they should know who they are, should they ever see this project. 

Further gratitude is given to my peers or now graduated peers Abbie, David, Sumaiya, Lila, Tom, and Amanda. As well as all the others who read excerpts, discussed portions, helped refine conference paper presentations based off of it, or listened to me rant about it. If we accept that there is a campus culture at UMass and it is the people who make it, I can think of no finer friends than these. 

Finally, I must thank the dedicated writers, students, and frankly astoundingly good journalists at The Mass Media be they from the past, present, or future. Their dedication to the craft, and amazingly diligent attention to documenting campus affairs, was instrumental in pulling various threads together. Thank you to all Mass Media journalists. 

What Was The Watermark?

We must begin by repeating the assertion that the tangible record is physically and geographically scattered. One third is in one building, half is in another building and another department entirely, and the remainder is in apartment buildings of former editors, and myself. This does not include the digital locations or iterations of each volume. As a result we will not be going volume by volume and detailing a micro-history of each one. Not because the volumes do not exist, but because assembling them all into one place is currently physically impossible. This being said, enough exists readily available for us to paint a very clear, if not wholly and irrevocably complete, picture of The Watermark. 

Books have always been freely and readily available in the Wheatley Hall building at UMass Boston and this is I believe the model on which later distribution patterns for The Watermark are based. In fact, in late November of 2025 I was able to find a copy of Howth Castle, the predecessor magazine to The Watermark. In 1993 the name of the journal was changed from Howth Castle to The Watermark, with the following logic given in the editorial introduction to Issue #1: 

The Watermark succeeds Howth Castle as UMass Boston's journal of the arts. Many people have asked us about the name change. Howth Castle was a fine name, but its meaning, origin (from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake), and most importantly, its connection to all of us, became lost over time. The Watermark applies to our harbor community and writing and art more readily. A watermark can be found on high quality paper; it can refer to tidal change; it can be the mark left by a bottle or cup of coffee on a cheap eats place mat—you get the idea. The point is that "watermark" has many definitions and people use it and think of it in different ways.

Interestingly, for an English arts magazine it was not hosted originally in Wheatley Hall (where the English department lives, on the 6th floor.) but on the 4th floor of nearby McCormack Hall in room 407. By Volume #9 in 2001, the Editor’s Note implies that the journal is based on Wheatley Hall’s 4th Floor room 177. In 2009, it was on the third floor of McCormack Hall, alongside every other student publication that existed at the time. Throughout its history, it would move from office to office before ending up in the office of Student Affairs in the 2020s. No reason is given for this room & building change, but this drift closer and closer to the English department is important to note because, when reading the editorial introductions of the first 10 volumes of The Watermark the drift from gratitude to material support (funding, computer access, etc.) to gratitude for artistic support from figures still on campus in 2026, such as Professor Askold Melnyczuk or Professor John Fulton, is evident. In the interest of full disclosure, at the time of writing I was a student of Professor Fulton but did not ever ask him about this work. 

The Watermark, being a student publication, was dependent on support from UMass Boston faculty and staff. And one name which is mentioned with borderline reverence and continued gratitude for the first 10 years of its life is Donna Neal. Volume #7’s Editorial note goes the farthest;

To our outstanding advisor and friend. Donna Neal, Warrior Princess of Student Life, who not only spent a great deal of her own time getting us the lowest bid possible for publishing, but also came through in our time of need— we worship you.

Such acknowledgements underscore the extent to which The Watermark, like many student publications, depended on informal labor and institutional goodwill as much as on official funding structures. Quite frankly, without it, most journals collapse at some point or another. The Watermark, in its foundational years, received a level of support that ensured longevity well into the 2010s and early 2020s. It was not until Volume #17 in 2007, that paragraphs-long acknowledgments to staff such as Donna Neal and Professors such as Askold Melnyczuk disappeared in favor of a more editorial approach about the mood of the volume itself, or shorter one-line acknowledgments to key figures on campus, began to emerge. 

In fact, according to a student newspaper article dated January of 2016, the then managing editor Deanna Elliot recounts a fascinating story about The Watermark worth quoting extensively; 

…“As a communications major I didn’t really have much experience with the creative side of publishing,” she said. “I didn’t know design software. Although I enjoy reading and writing creatively, I didn’t really take any classes pertaining to that, and I had no art background.”  She fell in love with the creative side of publishing at UMass Boston, where she spent her senior year on a domestic exchange from UMass Amherst. “Advertising Manager for the newspaper was more like a business job. I was doing invoicing for ads and boring stuff, so I loved the experience I had at the Watermark.”  Inspired by her work on UMB’s literary magazine, the summer after graduating Elliot began planning to create a new literary journal. “It was right when the market crashed, so it was really difficult to find a job, and I didn’t want to settle for something that I wasn’t passionate about, so I started thinking, ‘I wish I had the opportunity to participate in a magazine of the arts when I was in high school.’”...“I became the advertising manager for the Mass Media, and at the time The Watermark office was right next door, and the walls were plastered with art, and everyone flowing in and out of the office seemed really creative. I was doing my boring business job, and I just thought I would love to be in that office, and learn the publication process.” She got a chance to run the Watermark because there were budget cuts that year. “The Watermark staff quit in protest, so that was my opportunity. No one was running it, and Donna Neal was the supervisor for both the Mass Media and the Watermark, so I went to Donna and I said, ‘I’d love to try to be the Editor in Chief,’ and she’s like, ‘Ok, well that’s kind of a tall order. You’re going to have to hire a new staff.’ It was really exciting.” 

I tried my best to find some contact information for Deanna Elliot to see if I could get further information on this period of Watermark history, but failed. They at a time ran what appears to be a Non-Profit for teen writers across Massachusetts called The Marble Collection. The website for The Marble Collection is still up, but has been hijacked to display advertisements for online gambling malware. I will tell you that Deanna Elliot was, in the end, a successful leader in the publication process because I was told discreetly by figures in the Student Activities field that she was able to negotiate discounts for The Watermark’s printing costs later on in her career. This might, in some way, contribute to why the journal was able to regularly print thousands of copies during the early-mid 2000s during a Golden Age period

Turning back to The Watermark, this quoted moment serves to highlight the precarity of most college journals and publications, and how often one remembers the contributors or editors but neglects to mention that, in this environment and on this publication model, it would be wise to remember the Donna’s of the campus, who remain in place as a faculty advisor for years and years while editors, funding,  student bodies, and contributor tastes change. Their dedication, and wealth of experience, ensures that a student Editor-In-Chief, who was oftentimes learning on the job or else entering the role with some theoretical training via an MFA program, has the mentorship required to put out a finished journal. 

Campus publications, as a genre, are chronically unfunded or underfunded, and yet because they are not prestige or canon-adjacent journals, they are free to take risks that otherwise more established or more public and widespread journals are unable to take. The Watermark is unlike other campus publications, however, in that it was able to have it both ways. It was for a time well-funded, and able to reward bold contributors. To illustrate this point I would like to turn back to the Editor’s Note of the Volume #14 from 2006. A rather lengthy paragraph goes on to state;

We have nothing but gratitude for the generous support and contributions of more people than we can possibly name. So many people have been involved in the production of this issue, and our appreciation goes out to everyone, but especially our tireless staff, the invaluable faculty here, and our wonderful friends. We feel we must acknowledge some people by name: Caroline Taggart of the OHT Gallery (www.ohtgallery.com) for judging the Art Award and the Art Department and Margaret Hart for funding it; Joe Torra for judging the Chet Frederick Fiction Award; Martha Collins for judging the Martha Collins Poetry Award; Sven Birkerts for judging the Non-Fiction Award; the Creative Writing Department for funding the Fiction and Poetry Awards; Duncan Nelson and Joyce Pesseroff (printed with permission of Carnegie-Mellon University Press) for allowing us to include their work; the Undergraduate Student Senate; Caroline Coscia and the Graduate Student Assembly; Bernadette Levasseur and Brian LeBlanc at Atrium Reprographics for putting up with out last minute requests; Donna Neal and the Student Life staff for all their help; and everyone who submitted this year and in the past.

This issue is especially quotable because Volume #14 sits squarely at the middle of The Watermark’s publication history that is accessible. At this point in its history, it must have been a well known entity on campus and had broad institutional backing that could be translated into genuine award / prize support and created a circular pattern of funding→prize support→applications into the journal, which justifies itself back into funding. Money here matters. 

Contrast this to the last available digital version on ScholarWorks from 2014, and there is no mention of awards, editorial thanks, and only brief acknowledgements. But there is a full page advertisement encouraging students to enroll in the MFA / Creative Writing  program. This suggests that at some point there was a shift in the relationship / funding between 2007 and 2014. Indeed, Volume #15 from fall 2006 is interesting in that it hosts in the final few pages, advertisements taken out by a new student journal called Provacateur: A Literary Magazine that was attempting to secure contributions for its debut issue, and was founded by MFA students who were interested in LGBTQ representation (or a lack of it.) This was not a replacement by any means. It was just another node in the network of literary magazines, which should be treated with excitement because a campus with only one lit mag is asking to become a campus with no lit mag, should it fail. At one point UMass Boston had several. Now it has, by my count, two. The Breakwater Review and The Waterfront, which we will discuss in detail later. There is an honorary mention in the form of Literally, but this magazine was merely campus-born, not campus-bound.