pubunit

Go for the Gold for our students! 🥇 When Redbirds show up together, real impact happens. Your gift—whether it’s $10 or $100—helps fund scholarships, programs, and opportunities across campus. Participation is the win. Join in giving today!

Visit the link in our bio to donate to the Publications Unit Award, the Publications Unit General Fund, or any of our English campaigns.

Thank you for your support of our students!!

Tomorrow (2.26.26) is the big day! Read below for a special note about our fundraising for this year’s Birds Give Back, and visit the link in our bio to donate.

This year, we’re raising funds to change the name of the Publications Unit Award in honor of ISU Publishing alum Jessica Wozniak.

Wozniak was an Illinois State University alum and Robert G. Bone Scholar who completed a BA in English–Publishing Studies and an MA in Communication. After graduation, she received a Fulbright Scholarship to teach English at the University of Montengro in Podgorica, Montenegro. She also taught for four years at Liceul Teoretic National & Colegiul National Bilingv George Cosbuc in Bucharest, Romania. An experienced public relations and communications specialist based in Chicago, Wozniak worked as the Senior Communication Manager at JLL. In 2024, at the age of 35, Wozniak was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer, which spread to her liver. Wozniak passed away recently after a tough two-year battle, on February 12, 2026.

Your gift during Birds Give Back will help us recognize Redbirds while building a legacy to remember Jessica Wozniak as we seek to name the fund in her honor.

Meet the Pub Unit’s Spring Semester Interns!

Swipe to say hello to our new Spoonfuls chapbook covers!

And follow the link in our bio to preorder Elizabeth Clark Wessel’s “Everything Small Is Moving” and Nicholas Alti’s “Inhale the Ghost”, shipping late April 2026.

✨📣 Announcing the winners of the 2025 Spoonfuls Chapbook Contest 📣✨

Congratulations to Elizabeth Clark Wessel (“Everything Small Is Moving”) and Nicholas Alti (“Inhale the Ghost”)!!

Originally from rural Nebraska, Elizabeth Clark Wessel now lives in Stockholm, Sweden, where she works as a literary translator. The author of four previous chapbooks, her first full-length collection, None of It Belongs to Me, was published in 2024 by Game Over Books. (photo credit Birgit Walsh)

&

Nicholas Alti is a bartender in Atlanta who holds an MFA from the University of Alabama. He is interested in absurdity, silliness, levity, and surrealism. His poems are published in Denver Quarterly, The Columbia Review, Poet Lore, and The Harvard Advocate, with horror poetry published in Jersey Devil Press, Star*Line, Witch House, and elsewhere. Nicholas is from a rural place near Lake Michigan. His writing oriented website is 3bluntzatonce.com

Both chapbooks gripped us with their incisive attention to the strangeness of living in constant upheaval, and warranted coming back again and again. We’re so excited to bring these writers’ works into print! Both chapbooks will be published in April 2026—stay tuned, and please join us in welcoming Elizabeth and Nicholas to the PRESS 254 family 🥄

The semester is winding down but we’ve still got a new Publications Unit Alumni Showcase article to share! This semester we’re featuring Presidential and Robert G. Bone Scholar , class of 2015 🏅

Happy Halloween from the Publications Unit! Stay spooky out there 👻

Check out our newest Publications Unit Alumni Showcase featuring Dr. Hannah Kroonblawd, class of 2022!

This interview was conducted by Greta Terfruchte, a Sutherland Fellow and Masters student in the

In the interview, Hannah reflects on her time at ISU and at the Publications Unit, and how her editorial experiences with inform her current role as an English professor and creative writer at Concordia University Nebraska.

“Imagination is also something I think about when I consider how publishing and teaching expand my creative writing. I am always astounded by the stories and poems my students bring to the workshop, and by the meticulous attention I encounter in my editorial work.”

Link in bio for the full interview!

The evening hours are when we're most likely to curl up with a PRESS 254 chapbook, the Sinclair Lewis Society Newsletter, a poetry collection from Downstate Legacies, an FC2 novel, or the latest issue of Obsidian. If you've ever spent time with our publications, then you know how transformative they can be. Why not make a little stealthy evening donation to ensure that we can keep producing the chapbooks, books, and journals you love?

The Publications Unit - Illinois State Birds Give Back When you support the Publications Unit, you are supporting hands-on learning opportunities for Illinois State University students to gain experience in editing, graphic design and typesetting, marketing and publicity, and many other tasks related to the publication of literary and scholarly books an...