When second-year University of Iowa student Nic Cazin went looking for a place to express themself on campus, they were shocked to find out of all the literary magazines on campus, no LGBTQ+ literary magazine existed. After learning this, Cazin knew they had to make a change.
“I would love a platform to share my voice and have it known as a queer publication voice,” Cazin said. “I figured a lot of people on campus could benefit from that too, even if it was just creative work.”
Now, the Orlando Literary Magazine, founded by Cazin and Riley Babel, also a second-year UI student, has become the first literary magazine devoted to promoting and empowering LGBTQ+ community members at the UI.
“Considering the enormous number of literary journals on campus, it’s shocking we’ve only just now established one specifically for queer stories,” fourth-year UI student Danny Willis said. “I wish we had something like Orlando when I was a first-year.”
While other literary magazines on campus accept queer stories, Orlando stands out as the first to require queer elements within a piece to be accepted for publication.
“Our publication is so broad because of its queer stories and queer voices, which encompass so much in the LGBTQ+ community since the spectrum is so broad,” Babel said. “We wanted it to be a safe space for both our staff and our writers.”
The Orlando Literary Magazine is named after a novel of the same name by Virginia Woolf. “Orlando” is considered one of the first queer novels in literary history, highlighting themes of gender, identity, and sexuality throughout three centuries.
The novel is interpreted to be about Woolf’s own lover and muse, Vita Sackville-West. The son of Sackville-West, Nigel Nicolson, even called the novel “the longest and most charming love letter in literature.”
For the founders of the Orlando Literary Magazine, it was important to name the publication after something historically impactful.
“It just seemed really important to name this magazine after something that was foundational,” Cazin said. “It was subtly gay, and that’s kind of what we’re going for here.”
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The Orlando Literary Magazine collects submissions featuring either LGBTQ+ characters or topics that are written by LGBTQ+ community members.
“Our goal is, of course, to always uplift queer voices and to protect the queer communities,” Babel said.
While other literary magazines on campus may have an emphasis on accepting submissions of one genre, the way Venus accepts romance pieces, for example, Orlando is open to an array of genres. Even though a queer element must be present, this does not mean the piece needs to be centered around a queer romance.
“I love queer romance, but I didn’t want this to be only queer romance. Like, you have queer sci-fi, where the main character’s queer, but it’s not a romance,” said Cazin. “We saw a lot of that in our submissions, so I was super excited.”
While Orlando accepts fiction and nonfiction pieces, the literary magazine also accepts a wide variety of other queer media, such as poetry, scripts, and visual art.
With the help of the UI Magid Center for Writing and their own advertisement, Orlando already has a wide outreach in the campus community and across english and creative writing circles.
“We’ve definitely been hearing a lot of people say they’ve been hearing about [Orlando], and people seem to be really excited for it,” Babel said. “I feel like it’s been a very successful start and launch so far.”
Orlando is aiming to complete its first edition before finals week, to distribute the magazine to readers in both online and print formats.
Hoping to publish an edition each semester, Orlando will be accepting submissions again next semester.
Editor’s note: Nic Cazin is a former employee of The Daily Iowan.