Carleton College Voice

Founded in 1935, The Voice of the Carleton Alumni was created “as a personal link between Carleton and her far-flung family; it is not regarded as an instrument for fundraising. Its pages are designed to report rather than exhort,” according to Carleton: The First Century. That is, the magazine I edit for the Northfield, Minn.–based liberal arts college—now just called the Carleton College Voice—doesn’t have a donation envelope that falls out when you open it, its cover stories needn’t feature the football team, and the aim is engaging storytelling for, about, and relevant to its 34,000 alumni.

Editorially, the magazine examines the “place” of Carleton college: both what goes on in its classrooms and common spaces, and the intellectual terrain of its alumni, who seem to share an ethos of curiosity, rigor, and a dab of irreverence. Guided by a mantra of pursuing inquiry over ideology, the storytelling is diverse and intelligently presented, with keen attention paid to quality art, design, and writing. Recent contributors include artists Pao Houa Her, Piotr Szyhalski, Marlena Myles, and Erica Lord; writers like popular historian Jack El-Hai, magazine journalist Tim Gihring, and James Beard Prize–winning critic Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl; photographers Bobby Rogers, Ackerman + Gruber, and Endia Beal; and illustrators like Klawe Rzeczy, Amandine Urruty, and Benjamin Flouw). A beautifully designed, perfect-bound triannual publication, the Voice aims to serve its alumni readers with engaging stories about a place they cherish while also transcending its status as an alumni magazine to address broader issues considered by those connected with this elite liberal arts institution.

Here are the issues I’ve overseen since starting as editor in 2023:

Fall 2024: With art by Rebecca Sunnu Choi, this issue’s cover story highlights a piece by alumni author Kao Kalia Yang about TRIO at Carleton, a federal program that helped Yang and other low-income and first-gen students acclimate to college life. Inside, Tim Gihring’s profile of alumni historian Jack El-Hai, whose 2014 book The Nazi and the Psychiatrist has been adapted into Nuremberg, a Hollywood blockbuster starting Rami Malek and Russell Crowe; Amy Carlson Gustafson’s piece on student-centered changes to Carleton’s approach to campus safety and sexual misconduct, and more. A highlight: getting to work with my friend and past collaborator, Bobby Rogers, who shot portraits of El-Hai and alumni Roger Faust, recently hired as the college’s second Indigenous faculty member. [More]

Spring 2024: Hurtling toward an ominously looming election, this issue captures the tone with our first headline-free cover, featuring an artwork by Amadeo Lassansky, a flag shot from an unexpected angle. As I wrote in my introduction, “Is it unfurling or curling in on itself?”—a metaphor for a question Ben Franklin posed during the tumultuous Constitutional Convention of 1787: Is the sun rising or setting on American democracy? Other stories include Jon Spayde’s look at disinformation and conspiracies expected in the 2024 campaign; my piece on the ways journalists, including alumni like the Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart, NPR’s Danielle Kurtzleben, and Politico co-founder John Harris, were planning on covering the election in light of historic distrust of the media; and a series of four commissioned get-out-the-vote posters by alumni artists Mildred Beltré, Erica Lord, and Ethan Murrow, Christina Seely. [More]

Winter 2024: On the cover, a piece colleges everywhere keep buzzing about: AI and higher education. Amy Goetzman’s lead story, featuring artwork by Aesthetic Apparatus, asks how AI can support—not subvert—human intelligence. Inside, my first feature—a profile of art professor David Lefkowitz; a look at how recreational marijuana was legalized in Minnesota, thanks in part to Carleton alumni; the launch of Object Lessons, a series on pedagogical objects like the apartheid-era Polaroid used in the classroom by photographer Xavier Tavera; and more.

Fall 2023: Already underway when I was hired, I helped previously contracted writers fine-tune their approaches, wrote five pieces (including an introductory editor’s column), edited features (including a profile of Kai Bird, the alumni biographer whose book was made into the Hollywood blockbuster Oppenheimer), and brought in friends from my past life in contemporary art to help with visuals, notably Pao Houa Her, who photographed Hmong writer Kao Kalia Yang for the cover story, and Piotr Szyhalski, who illustrated “COVID-19: Are we ready for the next pandemic?” The issue also features a rollout for an eight-page feature on overcrowding in the national parks. [More.]