Jacob Leach is a Mercyhurst sophomore, and my Lumen co-editor. He is a criminal justice major with a minor in creative writing. He is considering changing his major to English with a concentration in text, graphics, and design. “Creative writing will be attached to it," he said. He enjoys binge watching YouTube and Netflix, & reading and writing at the Mercyhurst bookstore.

He's an avid video-game player and gets his fix almost every day when he isn’t studying. I chose to interview Jacob to get his personal view on what drove him to become a writer and why he believes LUMEN is an exceptional platform for aspiring poets and storytellers.

MM: What are your origins as a writer?

JL: “I started writing in high school during my junior year. I started thinking of stories when I played Dungeon and Dragons and then it progressed from there. I actually didn’t care for writing in elementary and middle school. So when I hit high school both me and my stories took off, intellectually. I started reading and writing a lot more. I wrote nearly every day and it wasn’t until last summer that I finished my first story at seventy- pages.”

MM: “Nice!”

JL: “That was only a fragment of what I wanted to do with it. Also within that summer, I wrote a separate 40-page story that I wanted to send to editors at magazines.”

MM: “Care to elaborate on the stories you've written?

JL: “The first story I had finished was about a detective solving a murder on an island off the coast of Rhode Island. The second one I wrote was a fantasy story telling the tale of a warrior and a shady character going to a town in the desert in search of a blacksmith. Also, I wrote a story for one of my later classes during college, that I recorded my voice and put it on YouTube and Soundcloud. (links below) That story was about a traveling warrior with really no affiliation with any known kingdom or realm. He finds himself in a forest where he comes face to face with something of the likes he has never seen.”

MM: “Compelling.”

JL: “Yes it was, I wrote in a month's time, I told myself, you are going to do two pages a day, and I did! I managed to write the forty-page story in a month, I was very proud of myself because it took me a year and a half to write the seventy-page story. My writing has progressed and I have become more skilled at putting words to paper, so things have been produced faster.”

MM: “How has Lumen been beneficial to your growth as a writer?”

JL:” As a writer, the Lumen is beneficial to me because it gives me an outlet to both write for the Lumen and to write to others. Usually, when you begin writing, you are writing for yourself, but then when you put others in the equation, it becomes all that more enjoyable. “

MM: “How great of a writing platform do you believe LUMEN is for Mercyhurst University students?”

JL: “I think it is a fantastic platform. It gives people the opportunity to express themselves and show their true colors when they normally wouldn’t be able to. If people aren’t good at drawing or a different artistic platform, sometimes writing would be almost better for them. You can clearly state you mind besides “this color means love”. (laughs) “

MM: “Where do you hope to take LUMEN?”

JL: “Being an editor for Lumen, I hope to expand it to make it more accessible to people and to give people more opportunities to express themselves. That is why I asked you (Michael Mongera) to join. When I first joined LUMEN, it seemed quite small. With only one print a year and a poetry reading here and there. However, with the ideas me and you want to implement, we plan on making it a much larger organization. When you have this great of a platform, why wouldn’t you go big?”

You can listen to Jacob’s audio story on Soundcloud and YouTube below.