Naomi Greenstein is an Mercyhurst English major with a contract minor, of new media writing with a concentration of professional writing. Her hobby of dancing started when she was 3 years old. In the years to follow she became a dacning teaching, but has put that on hold to pursue her academics with English. I choose to interview Naomi to get a pespective of one of the many people that has maintained LUMEN to the success it is today. I interviewed her at the Humanities Lounge in Preston Hall.
MM: “What are your origins as a writer?”
NG: “So, because I was the baby of four kids, that gave them all of this parental role over me, or somewhat. I was like five or six maybe, and one of my sisters knew I was interested in writing. So she gave me this exercise where she had me come up with these characters for a story. I had to give them the descriptive verbs and names. I made a story out of that. We had a sort of teacher and student relationship. It was so fun for me I continued the exercises and I kept writing stories in notebooks. I would decorate them with puffy paint (laughs). It sounds so nerdy."
(I interject my bad habit of writing my name in cursive on my furniture and childhood love of Hannah Montana out of solidarity.)
“English was the class I truly excelled in, just because I cared for it more than anything else. What I have been doing in college is geared towards content strategy and professional writing, which is why I am focused on that so much more.”
MM: How did you get started with LUMEN?
NG: “I was English major when I started school at Mercyhurst, but I didn’t know what the fuck to do with that, but I knew that I wanted to study with English. I pretty much just joined as many clubs as I could. LUMEN was a big step in the right direction for me. It’s how I got to know so many of my friends, and most of my other friends had already graduated, sadly. But when I was a freshman I was on the board of editors for LUMEN. It was such a cool thing for me, because I went to an underfunded high school that had little opportunities for me with magazines and newspapers. It was a very cool thing to see all these people submitting all of these cool pieces. It was a center for creativity and artistry. Such an awesome new experience that has kept me moving up ever since.”
MM: Have you ever been published in the LUMEN?
NG: “I think I was published once. There was one year where I didn’t submit, I think it was my freshman year. I had no expectation of getting in, I just did it for fun. The poem I had published was called “The Medusa Effect”. Take that as what you will.”
MM: “That sounds so hardcore (laughs).”
NG: “(laughs) I hope so. It had a lot of swearing in it. I don’t think the sisters would appreciate that.”
MM: "Where do you hope LUMEN goes to in the future?"
NG: "I just hope that it becomes a lot more bigger and expansive. I think speaking in terms of that more people should beinterested in LUMEN and more people should submit. I think it is great to see the same people sumbit content every year, but it would be better to see more diversity with our submissions. This is why we like to focus upon freshman and sophmore submitters, so we can keep carrying on this tradition of literary study. I want LUMEN to be something that eveybody does. Submit a poem, a peice of fiction or corresponding artwork. It would put this creative vibe into the air over campus. We are a liberal arts school and LUMEN is important for a school like Mercyhurst. "
MM: "What sort of content would you wish to see be submitted to LUMEN?"
NG: "Obviously, I would still like to see poems and works of fiction. I just want poems with diversity. There was this one kid who graduated who had this huge range of poems. They would be super quirky, silly and funny where you would pee yourself laughing at them. And tehn he would present these somber and solemn pieces. Someone at one time submitted a graphic novel. That's awesome because it combines literature aspect with art and drawing, or painting. Whatever she did. We have never had anything like that before. There was another one too were somone created a drawing out of words that was submitted this year. We'll take anything honestly, keep submitting!"
You can follow Naomi on Facebook and Instagram below
