Otium

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Otium is an online prose magazine produced by students at the University of Chicago. It publishes fiction, non-fiction, stage, and interviews called "conversations" on a quarterly basis. Latin for leisure or ease, the name Otium, signifies the magazine's mission to connect play with work, and pleasure with critical thinking.

The magazine launched its first issue in March 2005 with founding members Sarah Adair Frank acting as coordinator, Christopher Casebeer as webmaster, and Jenna Telesca as art manager. Springer Lecturer in the college Achy Obejas advised. In the spring of 2005, Sarah Adair Frank and fourth year Deanna Day became co-coordinators.

One of the motivations of the magazine was to provide writers at the University of Chicago with an outlet for prose often dismissed as too long. The relative flexibility of the Internet frees the magazine from imposing word or space limits on submissions.

Otium has published a variety of genres, including fiction, essay, script, memoir, hyptertext, interviews, photography, and graphic art. Fiction authors include Hugo Perez, Jamie O'Hara Laurens, Joe Hanson, Bayo Ojikutu, E. S. Carroll, Kyle Beachy, Spencer Dew, Lee Wang, Tiffany Funk, and Merrie Greenfield. Writer-photographer Felicia Rosshandler and Professor of English at the college William Veeder have published work, as well as participated in interviews. Greg Allen of the Neo-Futurists contributed a short play, in addition to stage works by Jack Tamburri, Pablo Medina, and Carmen Peláez, and Achy Obejas. Interviews have also been conducted with Pulitzer Prize winner David Auburn, novelist and short story writer Joan Silber, Turkish writer Elif Shafak, and graphic novelist, screenwriter, and author Neil Gaiman.

Though based at the University of Chicago, the magazine accepts unsolicited submissions from writers and artists both within and without the University community, and is particularly interested in projects that combine visual images with text. The magazine does not currently accept poetry.

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