West High Review: A Review
Club sponsor and English teacher Tom Lindsey, club founder Ting Gao ’19 and club member Brenda Gao ’21 talk about the new West High Review club, and how students can get involved in this creative outlet.
This year you may have noticed the various styles of posters around the halls, calling for “All writers, artists, [and] photographers” to submit their work to the West High Review. So, what is the WHR? Well, it’s a club dedicated to putting out a bi-annual publication full of student’s work and creativity.
In the beginning, the WHR wasn’t always the west high review. According to Ting, the club actually existed before she came to West, and was originally named Favonius, and then The Grape Vine for a year before becoming the West High Review.
“For the past few years, it hasn’t done anything,” Ting said. “It hasn’t been active.”
After being involved with the Writer’s Workshop club, Ting decided that she wanted to continue being able to express that creative side of herself, and so she reached out to Lindsey. “He was like ‘hey, I’ve been thinking about reviving the West High Review this year’ so I was like ‘Hey I could help out with that’ and so I went and set up a booth at club fair,” Ting said.
We don’t really have a way to showcase, y’know, how good people are at writing, at poetry, at drawing, etcetera. — Ting Gao '21
Since then, the club has been mostly working on promotion and plans to put out their first publication towards the end of the year in May.
According to Ting, West offers various avenues for students to demonstrate their excellence through things like academics and sports, but not always their creative works. “We don’t really have a way to showcase, y’know, how good people are at writing, at poetry, at drawing, etcetera.” So she wanted to start something that would allow for creative people to have an outlet and gain recognition for their creations.
Brenda is a designer for the West High Review, and though she hasn’t been doing much designing so far, she and the rest of the club are more focused on promotion, and making sure to reach creative people through posters and other means of advocacy.
Brenda said her main inspiration for joining was to gain experience. “I just kinda wanna enhance my design experience, so I just went to the informational meeting,” Brenda said.
Besides the promotion of the club, Brenda has had a pretty good time working with the other members. “So far, I’ve just made some new friends, and we kinda share this interest of creative writing.”
All in all, the club has a wide variety of things to look forward to in their first issue including poetry, short story submissions, and student photography and art. Ting feels that the magazine is important because they “want to give creative people a way to show their talents,” and for those looking to do so, the West High Review is the perfect place to go.
