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The Mockingbird  is the student arts and literary magazine published as a partnership between the East Tennessee State University Department of Literature & Language and the Department of Art & Design.

The Mockingbird staff and contributors are all students, some submitting their creative works for the first time. Traditionally, the call for literary submissions occurs early during the fall semesters. The Department of Literature & Language does not manage art submissions for The Mockingbird; the Department of Art & Design provides work from its annual student awards. We encourage all ETSU students to participate in creating The Mockingbird.

Kara M Russell is Editor of The Mockingbird's 45th issue. Russell is an English Masters student also pursuing a certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL).

Before beginning at ETSU, she taught high school French in Paris, Tenn., and middle school English as a Foreign Language in Normandy, France. Her academic interests include literary criticism and transformative pedagogies.

While new to creative writing, she served as Managing Editor of Earlham College’s campus newspaper, The Earlham Word. Her undergraduate critical essays earned such awards as the Gettman Essay Prize, Kendall-Reagan Prize in English, and the Anna Eaves Award. At ETSU, she is a member of the Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi and received the 2017 Graduate Feminist Activist Award from ETSU's Women’s Studies Program.

Russell has given research presentations at the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Conference at Middle Tennessee State University, Tennessee Philological Association, and Southern Appalachian Student Conference on Literature. She will present at the South Atlantic Modern Language Association Conference this fall in Atlanta, Georgia.

Thank you for visiting our website; if you are an ETSU student, we hope to receive some of your work for consideration for an upcoming issue of The Mockingbird.