Alumni cite BC3 literary journal as vital to writing career
Angel Rosen sets aside a few poems each year to submit to Butler County Community College’s literary, art and poetry magazine, Facets.
Because although her work has been published dozens of times across the nation, Rosen hasn’t forgotten about the magazine where her writing first appeared in print. She credits her poem “Hurricane, Speaking, and To Rattle the Bones,” and its appearance in the 2013 edition with kick-starting her writing career.
“I've been so proud to submit to FACETS each year because it got me started,” said Rosen, of Armstrong County. “The groups they have (at BC3) can actually change what you're going to do.”
BC3 is taking submissions for the upcoming FACETS edition, which will be published next year. Students, faculty and other BC3 personnel are eligible to submit pieces to the magazine, which publishes short stories, creative nonfiction and poems, as well as visual art and photography.
Maizee Zaccone is a part-time English instructor at BC3 and editor of FACETS this year. She also had her early poetry printed in FACETS when she was a student at the college in the mid-2010s.
According to Zaccone, FACETS gives artists a lot of freedom in what they submit. The publication does not have a theme, and it publishes submissions of different mediums each year.
“It's pretty open ended, there's no theme,” Zaccone said. “They can play with the medium they want to, the form. They can connect and have their submission put in kind of how they want.”
Members of BC3’s writers club and Jerry Binus, its adviser, created FACETS in 1984. The inaugural issue was 5 inches wide by 8 inches deep, and was saddle-stitched — stapled — along the fold. The yellow-colored cardstock cover enclosed 43 photocopied, black-and-white pages containing 21 poems and 16 photographs and graphics, plus two cartoons.
The primary goals of FACETS is to provide a creative venue and generate interest in art and literature in a publication produced by BC3. FACETS prepares students for careers in academia, publishing and journalism, as well as in print and digital document design.
FACETS has won 24 first-place awards from the American Scholastic Press Association. Among the awards, FACETS has won most outstanding community college literary-art magazine eight times.
Two of Rosen’s own poems that were published in FACETS, “understudy of sea” and “The Cardinal,” were each nominated for a Pushcart Prize, a small presses recognition organization that has given awards since 1976.
Rosen said the themes she writes about now are similar to what she wrote in college — “confessional poetry about taking up space and feminist themes.” She has already submitted three poems to FACETS this year, which includes a love poem, a poem about “radical acceptance” and one that is “nonsense but in a good way.” These poems, Rosen said, can be relatable to adults as well as people who are college age.
“My theme of this year's are having to do with wellness and acceptance,” Rosen said. “I have a few themes that have been in every part of my work since I was 8 years old. Learning how to be unapologetic. Worrying how you are being perceived.”
Zaccone, too, said that even years later, her current writing resembles the pieces she submitted to FACETS when she was in college. She joked that in college her themes were more “emo, goth-type poetry,” but it was still exciting to get poems she wrote into an official publication.
“I mostly wrote poetry, that's still a majority of what I write,” Zaccone said. “I was learning about poetry for the first time in undergraduate, so that was my chance to take it further.”
Although she had been writing since she was 8 years old, Rosen said the writing program at BC3, as well as the opportunity to get published in FACETS, helped cement her poetic ambitions for the future.
Rosen credits the magazine and her writing professor, namely Eric Pedersen, with giving her a base for creative writing, and a way to distribute it.
“Once I learned how to write poetry when I was in third grade, I had this corner of the world that belonged to me,” Rosen said. “Once I got to BC3, I had the right people who believed in me, and that helped me become a real writer, a better writer.”
Zaccone encouraged students at BC3 to look into submitting writings or art to FACETS, because it could lead to more opportunity in the future. At the least, she said seeing her poetry printed in a publication, even a college one, instilled some confidence in her and her writing when she was a student.
“It was the first place that I was published. I know a lot of other students take off from using this as a launching pad for learning how to get published and what editing looks like,” Zaccone said. “It's a great opportunity for that.”
Writing for a publication that will be seen by college students is another positive for Rosen, who said she hopes to have a good influence on aspiring writers — just like she had when she was in college.
“I've had people come to me and say that my poems have helped them during dark times or said something they never knew how to say,” Rosen said. “My purpose then was, ‘I want someone to see me.’ As a 30-year-old, I submit to FACETS and other publications so that younger people can read it and say, 'She sees me.'”
