Call For Junior Editors! Fall 2024 & Winter 2025

Deadline: Sunday, September 15th @ 11:59 PM

Please contact us at commonhousemag@gmail.com if you have any questions. We'll get back to you via email when the status of your application changes.

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Thank you for your interest in Common House!

Common House Magazine is the University of Ottawa’s only official undergraduate literary magazine. Founded in 2022, we are still relatively young, which means that becoming part of our masthead will present you with the unique opportunity to contribute to and shape our identity as a magazine. 

Our magazine publishes two issues throughout the academic fall and winter terms, which means no summer commitment.

Eligible parties include current undergraduate students at the University of Ottawa enrolled in a Honours BA, Major, Minor, Microprogram, and/or Certificate in one or more of the following programs of study in the Department of English: English, Creative Writing, Professional Writing, and/or Professional Editing. 


Junior Editor

As a Junior Editor you will (1) read and rate incoming submissions, (2) attend weekly Board meetings, and (3) assist in selecting the contents of each issue. The opportunity may also arise for Junior Editors to do first-round edits on accepted submissions. 

By submitting the following form and short editing evaluation, you are committing to 2–3 hours a week (~2 hours for vetting submissions and 1 hour for the virtual weekly meeting). 

The attendance of extracurricular events such as open mic nights (Blue Mondays) and launch parties is optional but encouraged—they’re always a good time so we recommend trying out at least one. 

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Full name *
uOttawa email *
uOttawa program and year (e.g. 3rd year English) *
Please tell us briefly about any relevant work, volunteer, or extracurricular experience.
Do you have experience in graphic/web design, social media, or zine creation?
Which genre(s) are you most interested in reading? *
Required
Please list some of your favourite authors, books, or individual pieces (short stories, poems, essays).
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Please read the following fiction excerpt and briefly critique it:

There are many things that a border – even one as clear-cut and well guarded as this – cannot prevent from crossing. The Etesian, for instance, the softly named but surprisingly strong meltemi or meltem. The butterflies, grasshoppers and lizards. The snails, too, painfully slow though they are. Occasionally, a birthday balloon that escapes a child's grip drifts in the sky, strays into the other side – enemy territory.

Then, the birds. Blue herons, black-headed buntings, honey buzzards, yellow wagtails, willow warblers, masked shrikes and, my favourites, golden orioles. All the way from the northern hemisphere, migrating mostly during the night, darkness gathering at the tips of their wings and etching red circles around their eyes, they stop here midway in their long journey, before continuing to Africa. The island for them is a resting place, a lacuna in the tale, an in-between-ness.

(Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees)
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Please read the following creative nonfiction excerpt and briefly critique it:

A couple of hours from Beirut, if you’re fortunate with the traffic, you come within touching distance of the Syrian border. A course northward of that brings you through the Beqaa Valley and into Baalbek. We clambered through the palimpsest of ruins in Baalbek—the Assyrian, Roman, Byzantine, and Muslim ruins—and, wary of the proximity to the hot war just a few miles away, wondered if this is how people get kidnapped. That evening, coming back from the ruins, we thought we’d stop in Broummana, and see Edward Said’s grave.

Literature is haunted by gravesite pilgrimages. The acolyte seeks blessings. But are these visits also apologies of a sort? Apologies for having been born too late? Every visit to a gravesite is an act of regret: for imperfect reading, for imperfect writing in the wake, for the unrepairable tear in the fabric of experience. But I was to have another regret, for our driver advised against a detour that night. It was late and he could not be sure of the roads. We returned to the city, and I never had the opportunity to go back. And yet, for the remainder of my time in Beirut, each time I passed by the building in Hamra that had been pointed out to me as the Said family home, I felt my heart race.

Late Beethoven emerges coherently out of mature Beethoven. Mature Beethoven is an extension and fulfillment of early Beethoven. These are major shifts and distinct modes of evolution that are nevertheless not radical breaks.

Said tells the story of meeting up with his friend Hanna Mikhail, whose nom de guerre was Abu Omar. This was in Beirut one night in 1972. Abu Omar had received his PhD in political theory at Harvard at the same time Said had gotten his in comparative literature there. In 1976, by that time long physically engaged in the struggle, and very much admired for his tremendous courage, Abu Omar disappeared with a number of others in a small boat in the waters off the Lebanese coast. No one ever knew what happened to them. But that earlier night in Beirut in 1972, as Said recounts it, Abu Omar showed up with none other than Jean Genet. The two men arrived at 10 p.m. The conversations lasted well into the night, until 3 a.m.

(Teju Cole, "A Quartet for Edward Said," Black Paper)
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Please read the following poem and briefly critique it: 

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Thank you once again for your interest in Common House. The magazine’s continued existence wouldn’t be possible without enthusiastic individuals like you! Results will be sent out on a rolling basis and no later than September 22nd. 
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