The Go Anywhere Literary Magazine showcases student work in writing, visual art, and multi-media formats.
A completely student-driven publication, students can also take an elective course focused on building this literary magazine, available online and in print.
In the course, students will choose a theme that will tie that year’s edition together.
Want to submit your work?
We accept submissions every spring semester. Check out our guidelines to plan in advance.
2025 Magazine – Mythos
When we look at the world around us today, we see a world in flux. Technology is changing so quickly that it’s hard to keep up with its rapid pace. It can be wonderful. As a tool, it can be a means for connection and inspiration. It enables doctors to save lives and helps detectives solve cold cases. But like Janus, it has another face. Like most new technologies, the computer revolution has made its own way forward on a path of destruction. Unlike Janus, it looks forward, but it doesn’t look back.
In this technology shaped world, it can sometimes seem as though everything divides us. That there is little room for common ground or compromise. That there is no agreement even on what is true and what is not. We cannot even be sure of what is real and what is not. We live in an age of Mythos. The outside world is built of stories that idealize a past that never really existed and that predict a future that no one looks forward to. But, in our hearts, each of us has other stories. In the human heart is a mythos based on love and belonging, caring and loss, giving and gaining. We do not need tools to connect and inspire us. We only need each other.
Previous Magazines
Perspective is this year’s theme, and I have made it a personal goal to change my perspective about my role as the faculty advisor of Go Anywhere. This year, I have (tried) to give up much of the control of the process to the students. I have been fortunate to have a staff that is both talented and patient. They have taken over the responsibilities for everything from soliciting submissions to planning the party. Best of all, they have taken over editing. In many ways, editing has been the hardest part of the process for me to let go. Every other year, I have edited nearly every piece of writing. It’s always been time consuming drudgery, but it was something that I held on to. This year, I have passed that time consuming drudgery onto my students. (You’re welcome, students!) It’s been both wonderful and terrifying, but ultimately, it’s been immensely satisfying. There is no greater joy for an educator than watching students shine. I am incredibly proud of the amazing students who made the 8th edition of Go Anywhere.
–Jane Cowden,
Faculty Advisor
Time is both our most powerful enemy and our most benevolent friend. Time takes and gives, pulls and pushes, and moves fast and slowly at the same time. With the passage of time comes change, advancement, and loss. We live with more than one version of time; hence, this year’s theme: Time(s).
We have new leadership in our department and division, and this is the first year that I will thank my new wonderful department chair, Lyndsey Strahan, for her support of me and Go Anywhere. Change can be difficult, and Lyndsey has done a great job of helping our department transition.
As grateful as I am to my new department chair, I have missed my friend and mentor Richard Turner, who encouraged and supported me through the development of this publication and each and every one of its seven issues. Richard is happily retired and spending his days as a full-time grandparent. His experience is a reminder that there is nothing like spending one’s days watching an infant learn and grow to make a person aware of time–the great giver and robber.
My own daughter is a student at OTC this year and has a story in Go Anywhere. She was in middle school when we published the first issue. Much has changed since then, but my love has remained constant. Having a daughter who is an OTC student has allowed me to see the college from a new perspective. I have always loved OTC, and as I watch my daughter thrive in this nurturing environment with supportive faculty, I am even more proud to work here. I am grateful every day that she decided to become an OTC Eagle.
Because I am a parent as well as an educator, I am fully cognizant of the importance of a nurturing environment for today’s young people. The work our students produced this year is a little darker than the work that appeared in the first issue of the magazine seven years ago. The world our students live in feels darker than the world of seven years ago. Many of their elders are angrier, less trusting, more fearful–and sometimes, nastier. Our students’ work reflects that. It’s not just calling out to us; it’s crying out to us: They need the world to be calmer, kinder, safer. Let’s listen. It’s time.
–Jane Cowden,
Faculty Advisor
I can’t imagine what I would have done over the past few years if I had not had literature available to me. I admit that my definition of literature is broader than most people’s—I include film, television and even song lyrics. Most of us were dependent, at least to some extent, on some form of literature to keep us distracted, comforted and connected during lock downs, quarantines and social distancing.
Books even helped me forge some new relationships. A friend of mine started a social distancing book group. We started meeting in Zoom, and we’re still meeting now. Everyone is an educator, but we’re in three different states. It’s been interesting to compare and contrast the strategies that our communities, colleges, and schools have employed to keep the lights on and the fires of learning lit.
Like many educators, I have a school age child living in my home, and when the boundaries between school and home became virtually non-existent, it was hard on everyone. She lost an important year of high school, and I suffered her losses as all parents suffer with their children–helplessly. Watching her gave me insight into the experiences of my students. Even now, I can see the ways that online learning and thwarted expectations have marked them.
This year’s theme reflects their journey, and I am dedicating this edition to Generation Z. One of my wonderful volunteers, Mackenzie Richardson, suggested the themes of Growth and Change. They are perfect for the times we are living in. Growth and change are not always pleasant, but they are inevitable and transformative.
Fruition is what happens once our plans are completed, once our work is done, once our growth and change have resulted in something sweet and colorful and healthy. It is my goal for my students, for my daughter and for all of Generation Z.
–Jane Cowden,
Faculty Advisor
If ever there was a year that cried out for balance, that year was 2020. In the beginning, it fooled us–or at least it fooled me–with its symmetry and its reference to visual clarity. Hindsight is 2020? Indeed. Now it is past, and while vestiges of our struggle remain, 2021 feels different. We are poised on the brink of a new beginning.
This is our fifth edition of Go Anywhere, and it deserves to be celebrated with fanfare and flowers and maybe even baby quiches. Unfortunately, like most celebrations, it will be quiet, small and even a little private. We are balancing our joy with the sorrow that has embodied the past year.
Everything feels smaller this year, and that includes our staff. There are five of us for this fifth issue, but we have a few silent partners who support us through the process every year. We might not have been able to produce the magazine this year without our wonderful department chair, Richard Turner, and our fantastic dean. They are our quiet heroes.
Five years is long enough for us to have developed a community as well as heroes. Carol and Joseph Oerding have been on staff every year since the beginning, and several of the writers and artists whose work you will find in this edition have favored us with their work for several years. It has been wonderfully satisfying to watch their work grow and develop over time. Others of them are new to us and some of them are new writers and artists. There is a balance of the new and the familiar, nostalgia for the past and dreams of the future. Beginnings and endings are the nature of the college experience. The word commencement says it all. At the end, we start.
–Jane Cowden,
Faculty Advisor
When we picked this year’s theme, which is centered on an approaching storm and a return to clear skies, we had no idea how apt it would be. Now here we are, in the uncomfortable quiet that we only experience in the eye of a storm. We are working alone in our own homes, communicating through technology and meeting once a week using the ubiquitous Zoom.
I have missed my students more than they know, and I have been worrying over them, too. They are adjusting to the most abnormal normal that I have seen in my lifetime, and I hope they will never see anything like it again in theirs. The goal is to ride out the storm.
When the semester started, I was sure that the 2020 issue of Go Anywhere would be the best one yet. I have a wonderful staff this year, and for the first time ever, we would have the opportunity to meet three hours a week as an official class. Last year’s issue won the first place award for the Central Region of the U.S. in the CCHA’s literary magazine contest, and I felt confident that this year’s edition would be even stronger.
Now, I have gone from being determined to produce the best edition ever to being determined to produce the best one possible under the circumstances. I haven’t really been a very good sport about it. My students, however, despite upheavals in their academic lives, their working lives, and sometimes, their personal lives, have remained dedicated and calm. They inspire me every day.No matter how loudly the wind howls or the thunder crashes; no matter how chill the rains or sharp the hail; no matter how dire the forecast, I have been able to depend on my talented staff and the many talented writers and artists who have contributed to Go Anywhere 2020: Through the Storm.
I am grateful for them all.
–Jane Cowden,
Faculty Advisor
The content of this year’s edition of Go Anywhere reflects its theme. Just one glance at the beautiful artwork lets every reader know that “Gardens” was our theme. It is less obvious in the literature, but as characters grow or become stunted, bloom or wither, or even fall victim to blight, pestilence or a killing frost, the metaphor of gardens becomes clear.
Gardens is also an apt metaphor for the community college, where students are nurtured, coaxed, and–in a few classes–even fertilized a little. Some students come to us as seedlings, fresh from the greenhouse of high school and newly ready for the real world. Some come to us already mature, having outgrown their binding containers and ready to flourish and bloom. Others come to us bearing the scars of survival. They have lived hard lives that they are ready to leave behind. They are looking for a future in the sun and a chance to bear and enjoy the fruits of success.
As with any garden, OTC has its triumphs and its losses. As educators, we celebrate more often than we grieve, but the grief is inevitable and as gardeners, we know it is part of the job. Go Anywhere literary magazine is a county fair exhibit. It is a celebration of produce. Each work is the product of student creativity and growth. Not every bloom is perfect, nor will the fruit of every labor win a prize, but each piece reflects the growth of writers and artists who are producing work that reflects their individual development.
As a community college, we are the garden, as a faculty member, I am the gardener, and to me, every blossom is beautiful, and every fruit is sweet.
–Jane Cowden,
Faculty Advisor
“It’s like night and day,” we sometimes say, and by that we mean that something is different than it was before. Usually, it’s become better; the outlook is much brighter than it was. For many students the difference between their lives before and after they attend OTC fits this description.
Community college students begin their education at various stages in their lives. Some of them come at the dawn when everything seems fresh and new and full of promise. Others come a little later, having already started their families and working lives but looking for new opportunities and better days for themselves and their children. Sometimes people come to OTC because it is the light in the darkness. We have students who have experienced the horrors of war, the desperation of domestic violence, or more commonly, the gloomy hours of an unsteady economy. An empty bank account can make it feel as though the sun will never shine again.
Of course, inevitably, it does. The darkest night will always end in sunrise. For many people, OTC is the candle that gets them through the night. Wherever our students are when they come through our doors, every graduation is a new day dawning.
The work in this second edition of Go Anywhere is a collection of various emotions, ideas and experiences. Some of them are much darker than others, but all of them lead to a new day and a new beginning.
–Jane Cowden,
Faculty Advisor
You have the privilege of reading the first issue of Ozarks Technical Community College’s Go Anywhere Literary Magazine. Its contents represent all that is best about this uniquely American concept—the community college. Like our college, this volume is a diverse and wonderful collection of ideas, characters, voices and backgrounds. We reflect the differences in the authors’ experiences in our pages.
OTC is a place that invites anyone from anywhere to “start here; go anywhere.” For some of our students, it is truly a start, a choice they make at the beginning of their adult lives. For others, it is a chance to start over. Americans believe in second chances, and community college is a place to start again. No matter where they have been or what their experience, at OTC each student is welcomed, respected, and encouraged to “Go Anywhere.”
We selected the works in this publication with that philosophy in mind. Not all of them will appeal to every reader, but all of them together tell the story of our community, our college and our culture.
–Jane Cowden,
Faculty Advisor