Central Oregon Community College’s new literary magazine, The Thread, released its second edition this spring. This magazine illuminates the writing of COCC’s students. It is open to all enrolled students, including those from Deer Ridge Correctional Institution. The magazine is open to three different categories, fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction.
The magazine partnered with a graphic design class and features artwork created by its students. After the pieces were chosen for the magazine, they were sent to the graphic design class and each student read the pieces. Many of the articles were given artwork that was created specifically for the piece.
The magazine was compiled by students in the class WR299. This class of six students was taught once again by writing professor Eileen Sather. This is the second year the class has run.
After talking with Sather, she mentioned the differences between the class this year compared to last year. “Last year… we were getting the magazine off the ground… we needed all hands on deck to help come up with everything from you know, the title of the magazine, into the mission statement, um and read all the pieces and sorta decide on like the foundation of the magazine. So this year’s class… had less heavy lifting to do in the beginning of the term than last year’s group… this year we focused kinda a lot early on about talking about the idea of aesthetic and what appeals to us and a piece of writing so we were all kinda on the same page for what we were looking for and what we wanted to do with the magazine…. We got to focus a lot on what we were looking for in the submissions and the reading and the discussion.”
She also stated that last year she focused a lot on the WR299 students working on their writing. This year the students took a more editorial position and were given the option to share their writing in the class. Sather is looking for the right balance to allow students to expand their writing as well as focus on being editors for the magazine.
This year the magazine had nearly double the amount of submissions as last year, and the magazine is twice the length. Each piece was carefully read and analyzed by each student. Every week Sather would ask the students to choose a piece to champion. Sather stated that many passionate arguments erupted in the classroom, yet through it all each student looked at each other with respect. “We always talked about like, even when we disagree, being respectful of each other’s opinions and thinking about the way you’re forming your opinions and how important that is, to be professional and kind as colleagues.” Despite this, Sather said that “It’d be really cool hearing the arguments that people would make for a piece or what they struggled with a piece.”
The latest edition can be found on The Threads website, thethreadmag.org, and a physical copy can be found at Barber Library. Sather encourages people to read the magazine and discover what the students of COCC have to say. It helps the community know what the students are producing and for students to know what their classmates are thinking.
While visiting The Thread’s website, make sure to visit the about page to learn about the six dedicated students who brought the 2026 edition to COCC.
