APTOS — For the past four decades, Cabrillo College has had an avenue for students to publish their poems, short stories, artwork and anything else creative through the annual literary journal Porter Gulch Review.
The magazine has attracted a lot of creativity over the years, even garnering submissions throughout the world. To mark its 40th anniversary, it will host an on-campus reading Dec. 9.
Porter Gulch Review is edited by literature and film professor David Sullivan and created by students in his English 1B class. He said the magazine started in 1984 as Cabrillo was trying to establish a literary journal. Under the advisory of author Kirby Wilkins, the Porter Gulch Review started as a club that produced the first black-and-white edition that year. Eventually, professor Stan Rushworth took over editing but continued it as a club.
“They had to raise the money, publish it, distribute it,” said Sullivan.
Sullivan offered to take over the journal in the late ’90s and transformed it from a club to a full-on introductory literary course and opened it up to the Santa Cruz County community rather than just the Cabrillo student body.
“It’s been 40 years it’s been going, published each fall and now it’s a glossy 9-by-11-inch, 200-page compendium of artwork, both color and black-and-white, by local authors and artists,” said Sullivan.
The Porter Gulch Review began publishing online in 1999, which opened up submissions beyond Santa Cruz County. Now Sullivan said the journal has published work from as far away as Kenya and Japan.
“It’s more international than it’s ever been and more languages represented,” he said.
Beyond putting out an annual journal, Sullivan said students learn a lot of other skills as well.
“It’s been a really interesting process to turn it into a class that teaches students how to think critically about literature,” he said. “They kind of love the fact that nobody’s read this stuff before, so they’re getting to be the first ones who judge it. Part of when I took it over was that, as well as creating the literary review, you’re going to choose it but you’re also going to learn layout and InDesign and Photoshop, and then you’re gonna put on a launch party. So that’s their final each semester, is to get donations of food and drinks and induce the readers.”
Sullivan said these launch parties usually have a turnout of 50 to 100 attendees, with the books being given away for free.
Among other things, Sullivan said the Porter Gulch Review gives students a deeper love of literature and greater sense of engagement.
“Some of them have written about addiction or divorce or falling in love or out of love,” he said. “Those resonances spark their interest in seeing their work not just as something to be analyzed but something to be felt.”
Sullivan’s students will be celebrating the launch of the 2024 Porter Gulch Review Dec. 9, which will also coincide with the 40th anniversary. There will be food, drinks, live music, readings from the journal and giveaways of free copies. Sullivan said this has the largest number of contributions by Cabrillo students at 11, as well as contributions from Cabrillo professors like Adela Najarro, Maggie Paul and Andrew Fague.
The anniversary is not the only thing Sullivan has to look forward to this month, as he will also be celebrating the launch of his seventh poetry book “Salt Pruning,” which he co-wrote with Chicago author and poet Ignatius Valentine Aloysius. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Sullivan received a message from Aloysius on his then-most recent book “Black Butterflies Over Baghdad,” about the Iraq War. Aloysius said he was hosting monthly readings over Zoom and invited Sullivan to participate. After a few weeks, he called Sullivan again and asked if he had ever written a book with someone.
“I said, ‘I’d be happy to try it,'” film professor said.
Sullivan was interested in Aloysius’ background. He grew up in Mumbai and moved to Chicago to go to art school, but did not have a visa, so he had to be careful around the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. Eventually, he took up residency at the Evanston Art Center, received a master of fine arts in creative writing at Northwestern University and wrote the novel “Fishhead. Republic of Want.”
For the last two years, Sullivan said he and Aloysius would toss each other poems.
“He’d write one, I’d write one that took a line from his and turn it into a new poem,” he said. “Bit by bit, we created ‘Salt Pruning.'”
The book’s title refers to the process where vegetation grows on the edge of the ocean after being shaped by the spray of waves.
“He’s the one who made the connection,” said Sullivan. “The same thing that happens in Monterey happens in coastal Mumbai.”
Half of “Salt Pruning” consists of Sullivan’s poems, while the other half consists of Aloysius’ poems, and it ends with a poem both collaborated on. Sullivan said the book is partially the story of friendship in poetry.
“You can see it poem by poem as we get more comfortable with each other and ask questions about backgrounds,” he said. “We get to explore similar related touchstones in our different worlds and places of connection.”
Sullivan and Aloysius will be celebrating the publication with a reading 7 p.m. Dec. 10 at Works/San Jose, 38 S. Second St. in San Jose, as well as additional readings 7 p.m. Dec. 13 and 17 at Satori Art, 815 Almar Ave., Santa Cruz. In between, they will be hosting a book launch with Santa Cruz County Poet Laureate Farnaz Fatemi at the Horticulture Center at Cabrillo College. This event will take place at 5 p.m. Dec. 14 at 6500 Soquel Drive, Aptos.
As for the Porter Gulch Review, which Aloysius also contributed to, Sullivan hopes people will attend the 40th anniversary celebration and recognize the journal as a celebration of diverse talent in the Santa Cruz area and beyond.
“It’s a great night of poetry and prose,” he said. “Literature is a living, breathing thing that connects people that deals with hard issues. Particularly right now, I think it’s more important that we feel connected, that we wrestle with difficult topics and find ways to talk about them.”
The anniversary event is 7 p.m. Dec. 9 in Room 5005 of the Horticulture Center at Cabrillo College, 6500 Soquel Drive, Aptos.