Student Activities

Calliope is an academic journal that publishes literary criticism, scholarship, and book reviews written by students at California State University, Bakersfield. It is produced annually by the English Department. The purpose is of the publication to encourage critical understanding of literary and artistic works and to share those perspectives with others. The editorial team is faculty advised but composed of students, who learn publishing practices and oversee every step of review, layout, and production.

All submissions should be the best version of your work, carefully presented with minimal spelling, punctuation, and grammar errors. All sources should include citations according to Modern Language Association (MLA) style using the endnote rather than the footnote format. Submissions must be typed in a word document.

Submit from your student csub.edu account. Include your name as it appears on your school records and csub.edu email when you submit your work.

The faculty advisor will remove your name before distributing your contribution to the student editorial board so the evaluation of your work will be fair and objective.

All critical essays should not exceed fifteen manuscript pages including endnotes and Works Cited.

Book reviews should be a minimum of two pages and a maximum of five pages. They should use the following format:

• 12-point font Times New Roman
• Book title, edition, author, publisher, and year of publication
• Name of reviewer, major, college or university, and email

Sample format for book review:

Book Review
The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage (Book of Dust, Volume 1) Philip Pullman. (Knopf, 2017).
Reviewed by
Adelaide McButton
Department of Physics
California State University, Bakersfield
amcbutt@csub.edu

All submissions should be sent to calliope@csub.edu. 

Students interested in careers in editing and publication may join the Calliope team by enrolling directly into English 4750. This course counts as an elective in the English Major Language and Literature (EMLL).

If you have any further questions, please contact us via email at calliope@csub.edu.

Click on the links below for electronic copies of Calliope:

• Calliope 2023

Click on the links below for electronic copies of Calliope:

Calliope - 2022

• Calliope 2022
  
  

Calliope - 2020

• Calliope 2020

Founded by Dr. Solomon O. Iyasere in 1973, Orpheus is a literary journal published annually to encourage creative writing and artistic thinking amongst the students of California State University, Bakersfield. The editing team is faculty advised, but composed of a student body, which oversee every step of production.

Orpheus Submission Guidelines

All submissions will be sent to the email orpheus@csub.edu.

All submissions should be the best version of your work, with minimal spelling and grammar errors. We accept submissions of all kinds, as there are no restrictions in context or form. Submissions must be typed on a word document. Use of profanity must be crucial to the context of the work.

Submit from your student csub.edu account. Include your name as it appears on your school records and csub.edu email when you submit your work.

The faculty advisor will remove your name before distributing your contribution to the student editorial board so the evaluation of your work will be blind.

If your work is accepted you may choose to publish under any name that you choose.

Poetry:
Submit a poem or poems of up to 80 lines total.

Short Stories:
Submit up to 20 pages total in short stories. Short stories must be doubled spaced.

Chapter from Larger Literary Piece:

Submit up to 25 pages total in chapters; writing must be double-spaced.

Drama:
Submit up to 25 pages total in plays in standard script format.

Illustrated Comic Strip/Excerpt from Graphic Novel/Graphic Short Story:

Submit up to 10 black and white pages total in PDF format.

Art:
Submit up to 5 works of art. All submissions must be scanned or photographed properly. PDF format best.

If you have any further questions, please contact us at orpheus@csub.edu.

Click on the links below for an electronic copy of Orpheus 2023:

• Orpheus 2023

Click on the links below for electronic copies of Orpheus:

Orpheus - 2022

• Orpheus 2022 - Part One
• Orpheus 2022 - Part Two

Orpheus - 2020

• Orpheus 2020

Orpheus - 2019

• Orpheus 2019

Orpheus - 2018

• Orpheus 2018

Orpheus - 2017

• Orpheus 2017

Regardless of major, English Club is an inclusive, informal gathering of like-minded readers. Non-English majors welcome.

Join us on Fridays at Lengthwise @ the Marketplace at 3:30PM for informal discussion.

Faculty advisors are Dr. Andy Troup and Dr. Emerson Case.

English Club is free and open to all. 

For more information on Sigma Tau Delta and English Club, please contact Dr. Emerson Case at ecase@csub.edu. 

Sigma Tau Delta is the International English Honor Society. Its central purpose is to confer distinction upon outstanding students of the English language and literature in undergraduate, graduate, and professional studies. Sigma Tau Delta sponsors the California Writers Series, which aims to bring California writers to campus on a regular basis, and the Lectures in Language and Linguistics, which aims to bring a California-based linguist and/or language expert to CSUB’s campus every quarter to speak on a given topic and to meet with students and faculty. The society also holds its Annual Induction and Awards Ceremony, where we present the Betty Creative Writing Awards, created to honor the creative work of students at the undergraduate and graduate levels, and the Li’i Pearl Excellence in English Award, which recognizes outstanding graduates of the Department of English. Faculty advisors are Dr. Andy Troup and Dr. Emerson Case. 

To learn more about our parent organization, please visit: www.english.org.

For more information on Sigma Tau Delta and English Club, please contact Dr. Emerson Case at ecase@csub.edu. 

To become a member of Sigma Tau Delta, you must meet the following requirements:

• Be a current undergraduate or graduate student, majoring or minoring in English
• Have a B average overall (3.0 GPA), as well as a B average in English
• Have taken a minimum of 2 college courses in English language and literature
• Have completed 3 semesters (5 quarters) of undergraduate work

Lifetime membership includes:

• Scholarship, internship, assistantship, grant, and writing award opportunities
• Gaining the privilege to wear honor cords and medals at graduation
• Opportunities to be published in The Rectangle literary journal
• Opportunities to enhance your résumé

Each new member pays a one-time international induction fee of $45 for a lifetime membership. 

For a copy of the Sigma Tau Delta Membership Application form, click on the links below:

• Sigma Tau Delta Membership Application 2023-2024 - Word format
• Sigma Tau Delta Membership Application 2023-2024 - .pdf format

The deadline for applying to Sigma Tau Delta is January 26, 2024. 

For more information on Sigma Tau Delta and English Club, please contact Dr. Emerson Case at ecase@csub.edu. 

Through the generosity of Dr. Stafford Betty, the 2020 Betty Creative Writing Awards are presented annually to honor the creative work of students at the undergraduate and graduate levels at California State University, Bakersfield and California State University, Bakersfield – Antelope Valley Campus. Awards in three categories will be presented - Poetry, Short Story, and Drama. 

Application Deadline: TBD

Submission Guidelines

• Only entries received by 5 p.m. on April 3, 2020 will be considered.
  • Only one entry per contestant may be submitted per category.
  • Submissions must have been written by a student who is an undergraduate or graduate student at CSUB and CSUB-AV during the current school year.
  • Submissions must not have been published previously and must be the original work of the submitter.       
  • There are no entry fees or payments to enter or win the Betty Creative Writing Awards.
  • As a co-sponsor of this contest, Sigma Tau Delta will be responsible for assembling and managing the awards screening committee, which will consist of CSUB faculty and staff.
  • Sigma Tau Delta/The Betty Creative Writing Awards reserves the right not to name a winner in any or all of the categories if insufficient entries are submitted.

  ·     Awards will be presented at the Annual Sigma Tau Delta Induction and Awards Ceremony on April 24th, 2020. Award winners need not be present to win.

  ·     Per CSUB regulations, awards will be paid to each award recipient’s university account through the Financial Aid Office.

 ·      First place winners will have the option of publication in the CSUB literary journal Orpheus. All copyright privileges will be retained by the submitter.

• By entering the contest, contestants confirm that the submission is their own original creation.

Submission Specifications

• Each entry should be given an original title, which should appear at the top of the first page of the submission.
• Since judging of entries is done anonymously, no other identifying information should be included on the submission itself.
• Eligible categories are:
  
  Poetry – Poetry may be one poem or a sequence of poems but must be between 40 and 80 lines in length; entries should be in a standard font (Times New Roman 12 point).

Short Story – Short stories must be a minimum of 8 typed, double-spaced pages and a maximum of 25 typed, double-spaced pages in length in a standard font (Times New Roman 12 point).

Drama – Drama may be for radio, stage, or screen; entries must be a minimum of 8 typed double-spaced pages and a maximum of 25 typed, double-spaced pages in length in a standard font (Times New Roman 12 point).

• Entries that do not conform to these standards will not be considered for an award.

Submitting Your Entry

• Entries must be in either Word or .pdf formats. No other formats are acceptable.
• Please name your submission using the following format:

LastName_Betty_2020

• Entries must be received electronically by Dr. Emerson Case by 5 p.m. on April 3, 2020 at the following email:

ecase@csub.edu

• When submitting, please attach an electronic version of your submission in the body of your email:
• Include the following information in the body of your email message:
• Name
• Address
• CSUB ID#
• Email address
• Preferred telephone number
• Category of submission (Poetry, Short Story, or Drama)
• Title of submission

The California Writers Series

Each year the English Department sponsors two or more readings by poets and fiction writers living and working in California. Previous presenters have included Wanda Coleman (Guggenheim and NEA Fellow) and Kay Ryan (Pulitzer Prize winner and former United States Poet Laureate). Faculty contact is Mr. Matt Woodman. 

For more information on The California Writers Series contact Matt Woodman at mwoodman@csub.edu.

The Lectures in Language and Linguistics

The Lectures in Language and Linguistics series aims to bring a California-based linguist and/or language expert to CSUB’s campus every quarter to speak on a given topic and to meet with students and faculty. The lecture series is intended to further the development of linguistics studies here at CSUB as it will serve as a forum for linguists to report on their published works or on-going research in all areas of linguistics, including sociolinguistics (e.g., language contact, language and gender, varieties of English, language change), psycholinguistics, historical/comparative linguistics, second language acquisition/ English as a Second Language, or language and computers (e.g., artificial intelligence). 

The Lectures in Language and Linguistics series is sponsored by the Walter Stiern Library, Associated Students, inc. (ASi.), the Department of English, and Sigma Tau Delta, the International English Honors Society.

For more information on The Lectures in Language and Linguistics contact Emerson Case at ecase@csub.edu.