Cottonwood finds online home in KU Libraries partnership
LAWRENCE — In 1965, when a group of University of Kansas English majors approached creative writing professor G. Edgar Wolfe and asked if they could start a literary magazine, they probably didn’t imagine what would happen next. The students’ creation, Cottonwood, landed an interview with Allen Ginsberg, a central figure of the beat poetry movement, in its second year. This roaring start made way for additional features of influential writers and kicked off 60 years’ worth of issues full of original poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction, which the publication has recently made available in digital format through partnership with KU Libraries.
“Some of my best memories aren't so much about a particular issue, but the connections that I made with all the writers and the events that took place that I couldn't have imagined being involved in when I became an English major as an undergraduate at the University of Kansas way back when,” said Phil Wedge, senior lecturer in KU’s Department of English and editor of the magazine.
Wedge has participated in the publication from a variety of angles, first as a graduate student in the early 1980s, when his father, George Wedge, served as editor of the magazine as part of a 35-year academic career at KU.
Creating and fostering the magazine is a multifaceted and sometimes challenging project, Phil Wedge said, and Cottonwood’s editorial team seized the opportunity to partner with KU Libraries to make the magazine available online.
“Phil and the Cottonwood staff had been discussing the need for an online submission portal,” said Eric Bader, who serves a dual role as the digital publications coordinator at KU Libraries as well as Cottonwood’s production manager. “I work with Open Journal Systems every day in my job at the libraries, so I was able to jump in and say, ‘We’ve got just the thing.’”
The digitization support has helped streamline submissions and made the magazine’s review and editorial processes more manageable for the faculty and graduate students who work on it. It has also sparked a new e-store for the magazine, where subscriptions and back issues can be purchased.
The magazine’s editorial team is committed to its continued success, strengthened by the new partnership with the libraries.
“There was a time when basically it was a two-person operation, with help from whoever was in production at the time,” Wedge said. “And I'm still the business manager as well as the editor. So, I was concerned because I'm going to retire one of these days and I didn’t want the magazine to die when I left. The magazine is in much better shape now with this new opportunity to handle submissions and new way for people to access the magazine.”
The creation of a digital archive of past issues also expands access and aids in preservation. Alongside student and regional works, the magazine contains interviews and early pieces by Thomas Fox Averill, Gwendolyn Brooks, Robert Day, Rita Dove, Gerald Early, Scott Heim, Denise Low, Antonya Nelson and William Stafford, among others. The KU Libraries project marks the first time the magazine’s unique content has been digitally archived and organized in one place, significantly increasing accessibility.
“Unless those poems or stories turned up in (the author’s) collective works, they may not even be cataloged,” Wedge said, “but now, with the digital opportunity, we've been able to scan all the old issues in so that they're available.”
The magazine’s access to significant literary figures over the years began with Ginsberg and continued in part via association with William Burroughs, who lived in Lawrence from the early 1980s until his death in 1997. In 1987, George Wedge helped bring Burroughs and Ginsberg to campus when they and other artists of the beat generation gathered in Lawrence as part of the River City Reunion for performances and activities throughout the community.
“It was an amazing time,” said Phil Wedge, who was a lecturer in the English department during that period. “I got the chance to have Anne Waldman and Allen Ginsberg come and talk to my poetry writing class for a day.”
Bader said the new digital format, launched in August 2024, has helped the magazine reach a broader audience of potential readers and writers around the world.
“We have already received a good number of really high-quality pieces since we opened submissions in the summer,” Bader said, “and we are hoping to publish a special double issue in 2025 to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Cottonwood.”
Cottonwood is one of 60 journals and periodicals now hosted by Journals@KU, an initiative of the KU Libraries Digital Publishing Services program, supporting the KU community in the publication of scholarly journals online at no cost to the editors.
“We are really excited to have 60 years of Cottonwood’s history digitally archived in our journal holdings,” Bader said. “The magazine is a huge part of the Lawrence literary scene, and I’m happy to play a part in preserving its history.”