Black Rock & Sage is a journal of creative works published annually through the Department of English and Philosophy of Idaho State University with assistance from the Art, Music, and Theatre/Dance Departments. The senior and assistant editors are ISU graduate and undergraduate students with interests in creative writing, professional writing, journalism, and teaching. All artistic contributions, from design to literature to music, have been produced by graduate and undergraduate students in departments from across the university. General submissions are accepted year-round with each annual issue’s submission deadline of February 14. See submission guidelines for full details.

Fall 2022-Spring 2023 Staff

Editor-in-Chief: Sarah Rick

Prose Editor: Joshua Lemrick

Poetry Editor: Tamisha Green

Social Media / Advertising Intern: Maxwell Yankovich

Faculty Advisor: Susan Goslee, Department of English and Philosophy

History

While Black Rock & Sage is the current iteration of ISU’s literary journal, it is not the first. The literary scene in Pocatello, and certainly on ISU’s campus, has been vibrant since the school’s inception. A number of literary publications have emanated from and been affiliated with the Department of English and Philosophy over the years.

While the student-run newspaper The Bengal was the primary venue for creative output during the Idaho State College and Southern branch days, ISU’s creative publishing history basically began with The Last Stop Before the Desert, a publication which attempted to capture the unique voice and perspective of writers of the high desert plateau during the 70s and early 80s.

LSBD lapsed during the financially strapped (a phrase all too familiar in the context of literary journals) late 1980s, and its production was discontinued at a departmental level.

In the early 1990s, students and faculty within the department essentially lobbied for and created a replacement publication named Ethos. Ethos was advised by volunteer English department faculty, but was funded by a painstaking process of petitioning funds from the ASISU senate. Ethos published both student writing as well as a number of unsolicited manuscripts sent in as the result of a Writer’s Market listing.

Ethos directly transitioned into Black Rock & Sage in 2002 under the stewardship of its first faculty editor, poet Michael Sowder. During its initial years, BR&S published a range of texts both solicited and unsolicited, from students and established writers.

Changes were made to the mission of BR&S under the supervision of poet Susan Goslee, who shifted the nature of the publication to one that reflects the editorial input and creative output of ISU students exclusively. Since that initial decision, the magazine has expanded to include texts from many disciplines on campus, including art, music, history, sociology, and others. Recently, BR&S has begun printing full-color pages and coordinating a wider variety of public events, as well as creating a companion class to the publication.