Student writers hosted the annual Perspectives banquet to celebrate creative writers on Wednesday, April 9. Perspectives is a creative writing magazine held by the East Central Conference, where students can submit short stories or poetry to be published. The event was held at Mastricola’s from 11:00 to 1:15, and the luncheon was organized by Wordsmiths adviser Andrew Reise. Kettle Moraine Lutheran, Plymouth, Ripon, Waupun, and Winneconne high schools all sent their published writers.

“It celebrates them by bringing like-minded students together, in other words all of the students who came to the banquet are creative writers,” Reise said. “We handed out copies of the magazine and booklets, we also had two students from each school read selected works from the magazine during the banquet.”

Once all of the schools arrived, students were treated to a buffet lunch. Then later at noon copies of the magazine were distributed to students. Afterwards, students from each school came up to the podium to read their published work in front of other creative writers in the community.

“I thought that the poetry that people read was interesting and more innovative than I thought it’d be,” freshman Ewan Steffen said.

The banquet helped students meet other writers, and being able to publish could give them experience in writing and publishing their works on their own.

“I think it’s really nice, the venue is great, and the whole community here just seems nice,” Kettle Moraine Lutheran student Emerson Draheim said.

While the students have seen the same schools at the banquet for the past couple of years, the conferences are changing, putting Berlin in a new conference next year. 

   “First of all, we will have a literary magazine in the conference for students to get published in. As far as the banquet and things like that look, I don’t know at this time. I need to familiarize myself with the new conference, see what they do currently or what we can organize in the future. I don’t know at this time,” Reise said.