Exploring The Hero's Journey: A Writer's Guide

A compelling look at the hero's journey, according to the movie Alien. Shout outs to Joseph Campbell, the preeminent writer who explored the ideas in this article.

William S. Burroughs "The Bunker"

William S. Burroughs had what is known as "The Bunker," a place of reflection into the depths of the humanity. What's your creative space like? Do you like to work in darkness? Do you like to have a view of the the world outside or do you prefer to be isolated? 

Set in William S. Burrough's New York City apartment, the Bunker, this experimental film mixes images 

and audio of the nuclear holocaust from Hiroshima, Burroughs, and real confessions. 

 Film by Ram Devineni

LIFE goes to ‘Genius School,’ 1948

Photographer's and people who love capturing life at its candid moments, check out Nina Leen's photography of Hunter College and its little geniuses in the 1940s. 

Seven decades ago, the city housed just a "genius venture" at Hunter College ! Creating a school filled filled with 450 apparently well-adjusted, engaged kids who just happened to enjoy IQs averaging around 150 (Post-graduate students, by comparison, generally fall in the 120-130 range), it allowed these students to flourish in an environment where they would not stagnate being forced to follow the curriculum of average.

Read more: Genius School: Portraits of Gifted Kids in 1940s New York | LIFE.com http://life.time.com/culture/genius-school-portraits-of-gifted-kids-in-1940s-new-york/#ixzz3I2lYkwDy

Link to the article

Vonnegut's Eight Rules of Writing

Familiar with Kurt Vonnegut's eight rules of writing? In a world of lists and continuous quizzes, it's a reminder that we have our own process of writing and creativity - Vonnegut included. 

Feel free to construct a story using your own gust of creativity and bringing them to some of our last weekly prose workshops (this semester) with our prose editor Rachel, located in TH212 on Tuesdays, from 1:00-2:30!

Olivetree Contests

Poetry Contest : The Poem as a Movie Camera

The movie is one of the most modern art forms and poetry one of the most ancient. Combine these two media in a poem that shifts through images like a movie camera. When we see the outside of a building in a film and are then shown someone in a room, we have an understanding that the room is contained within the building. Connect images through implicit logic rather than explicit narrative. 

Or you can just write about movies, but what's the fun in that?

Drama Contest : "Ugly" and "Pure"

Write a scene wherein the "ugliest" character you can conceive of interacts with the "purest" character you can conceive of. Adjust the following terms to your own definitions. 

Art Contest : Music and Rhythm

Submit a visual art piece in which a strong sense of musical movement or rhythmic motion is conveyed.

Prose Contest : Second Person Perspective

When using second person narrative, the reader is placed as the focal point of the action, and the writer is able to determine the emotional influence of the story by procuring an atmosphere of suspension and disbelief. The story itself recognizes the reader as a central aspect, and perspective is henceforth altered.

Write a story using second person narrative, where you are in complete control of the reader's entire experience.

An Apology from the Editor : Errata for "Issue 55, Spring 2014"

To all concerned, all involved in the Olivetree:

At the Olivetree Review, we pride ourselves in not just putting out a magazine showcasing Hunter students' hard work each semester, but also ensuring that our magazine meets and surpasses the expectations of a professional college literary and arts journal. From the moment we have pieces of art or writing submitted to us to when our design manager is putting the finishing touches on the magazines digital files, we do our best to respect both the author/artist and their work at every step of the way. 

Unfortunately mistakes are made from time to time, and this past semester saw a number of mistakes sneak their way past us and into the final edition of The Olivetree Review Issue 55. I would like to sincerely apologize to the artists and writers whose names or pieces may have been improperly printed in Issue 55, and promise to you that no mistake was made with intentional malice or to decrease the integrity of your work.

Below will be a list of all known errors that have been found thus far in the issue, along with the corrected information and page number. We will also be working with those who have been affected so that to the best of our abilities we can right any wrong they feel has been done to them.

Nelly Gordpour
Nelly submitted a time lapsed digital photograph to us, "Untitled" which won our Art Contest Prize. In the magazine's directory, the page which her work is located on is wrongly printed as page 49 when it is in fact on page 55. On page 55, her last name was misspelled as "Gourpor" instead of the proper "Gordpour."

Luying Wang

Luying submitted pieces to us that can be found on page 10, pg 90 and pg 112. Due to an error in communication, these pieces were wrongly attributed to one "Cecilia Charlton" another student at Hunter who has submitted work to the Olivetree in the past, but not the creator of these art pieces who is of course Luying Wang. The pieces on page 90 and page 112 have had their titles swapped; page 90 shows "A Lost Sheep" and page 112 shows "Twisted World". "Twisted World (pg112)" 's medium has been wrongly recorded as Watercolor on Paper when it is actually Sculpture or more properly Ceramic Sculpture.

Theadora Hadzi

Theadora's digital photography piece "Surpass the Heights, Stir the Waters" was given the wrong page number in the magazine's directory. It can be found not on page 09 but on page 109

Louis Gaudio

Louis's drama submission, "Real Blueberries" on page 50, has his name misspelled alongside his piece. His proper name is not Guadio but Louis Gaudio.

Nicole Pergue

Nicole Pergue's  poem "Two Halves" on page 11, which won the Poetry Contest Prize, is labeled twice within the directory as both the contest winner and as a regular submission.

These are all the known errors that have been brought to our attention thus far. Again, I give my sincerest apologies for having allowed these errors to be printed within Issue 55 but I assure all students, whether returning or new to participating in the Olivetree, that we will be working hard from this point forward to make sure we do not repeat our mistakes.


Sincerely,

Jacob Cintron
EIC of The Olivetree Review