Quills & Pixels has been a part of the UA Little Rock community for 19 years. For the past 17 years, it has been in the care of Dr. Charles Anderson, who has guided students in the editing and publishing of seventeen editions of the peer-reviewed student publication. As of May 2016, Dr. Anderson is retired after 30 years of service to the Rhetoric and Writing Department and the UA Little Rock community. Many of the students and faculty wondered what would happen to the popular publication once the Fall 2016 semester began, but to our delight we are happy to announce Dr. Barbara L’Eplattenier as the new executive editor of Quills & Pixels 2017. She will teach the two courses associated with Quills & Pixels: Editing for Publication and Production for Editors. Although they are connected, each course is a stand-alone course, and they can be taken in any order.
Dr. Barbara L’Eplattenier has taught in the Rhetoric and Writing Department here at UA Little Rock for 19 years. Attracted to the university’s metropolitan location, she believed that working at such institution would allow her to inevitably improve the world: “I am an expert in some things and I don’t think I should keep that expertise here in the office or the university, but rather help improve the world.” Through her grant writing course and now through Quills & Pixels, she will be able to continue to do just that.
Dr. L’Eplattenier teaches Grant Writing, a class offered at both the undergraduate and graduate level. She guides students in helping others obtain funding for their organizations through the course: “Grant writing lets you change the world…. It helps people survive, not only the people that my students work with but [their] clients; it’s an economic driver in Arkansas.”
In addition to teaching Grant Writing, Dr. L’Eplattenier is also an editor for the WPA: Writing Program Administrators. She conceptualizes this work as pedagogical, noting that “90% of our peer reviewed manuscripts come back as a ‘revise and resubmit.’ So it’s our jobs to take whatever the peer reviewer has said and put it in such a manner that is going to open up the writer’s process rather than shut it down.” With her expertise and ability to “give good feedback”, Dr. L’Eplattenier is the perfect individual to lead students on the process of editing and producing the next edition of Quills & Pixels.
Although this is her first time teaching the Editing for Publication course, the first of two courses with Quills & Pixels as the content matter, she believes that the editorial staff is doing a good job so far and is excited about what the second half of the course will bring. “I’ve never been an executive editor for a student publication like this. It’s exciting!”.
Dr. L’Eplattenier makes every effort to groom and produce good editors, who are able to see a piece of writing for what it can be and have the ability to properly converse with the author. She says “I’ve said this to my class that ‘when you’re a good editor, you have to see what the piece could be, rather than what it is at the moment’, and that can be a very difficult thing; it’s about being an expert reader. Dr. L’Eplattenier explains, “[Getting students to start] thinking about how you talk to authors is part of my job: How do you coach authors? What language do you use when your writing to authors? And thinking about ways [the author] may interpret that. Those are things I can’t really do in grant writing, [and] really it’s a skill that can be developed. [Both courses are] going to let me help people develop a heuristic for looking at work; whether it’s their work or someone else’s work, and talking about it. [And] I’m real excited about that.”
If you are or know someone who wants to be an editor, both Editing for Publication and Production for Editors would be a great choice for any undergrad or graduate student. For more information on these and other courses offered through the Rhetoric and Writing Department, please visit our Rhetoric and Writing website.