Upper School literary and artistic talent will be on display in Harker Eclectic Literary Magazine’s (HELM) 2015 issue themed “Revolution”.

HELM is an annual student-run publication that features arts submissions from Harker students and faculty. It features poetry, prose, photography, art and writing. Since their February due date, HELM has received around 80 student-submitted works: 40 literary pieces and 40 visual art pieces.

“[The pieces are] very diverse and very strong. Writers and artists interpreted [the] theme in ways that were very different from one another and highly representative of their personal views of revolution, yielding an extremely diverse selection of submissions to choose from,” Juhi Muthal (12), co-editor of HELM, said.

This year’s issue of HELM is the first one to have a theme at all. All submissions go through a selection process where members of the HELM club vote for certain works following close examination of all works. Even though not all of the student submissions are published, HELM covers all perspectives of the Harker community to the best of its ability.

“In past years, we rated the pieces with a numerical scale,” HELM advisor Dr. Anne Douglas said. “I was particularly impressed with the review of the incoming pieces went. This year, they divided the students into different groups that would review the photographs, the artwork, and the writing, and they had an open discussion of these pieces. This was one of the most provocative and educational aspects of the process “what constitutes the art”.

The design team and editors have put together a final draft of HELM based on the selections and have sent the magazine to the press.

Freshman and sophomore involvement was particularly commendable in both the number of underclassman submissions and staff.

“[It is] clear that the magazine is going to be in good hands in the years to come,” Juhi Muthal (12), another co-editor of Helm said.

Besides the students who have worked hard on their HELM submissions, the editors have dedicated much of their time to the design of the magazine.

“I commend Juhi Gupta and Juhi Muthal,” Douglas said. “They are excellent leaders, and they have learned the inDesign application in and out, they have worked really well with the students in the staff of HELM.”

This piece was originally published in the pages of The Winged Post on April 22, 2015.