Grace Safford, ’20 Editor-in-Chief, Plant Mom

This Shout Out goes to Grace Safford, ’20 // Professional Writing, the Editor-In-Chief of The Well, a biannual magazine published through Champlain’s Center for Publishing (CFP).

The Well started as a class project, and Grace helped develop it into a regular publication.

“I was a student in the inaugural Fall 2017 Magazine Publishing class and worked on the first issue of the magazine. I wrote a feature story about respecting service dogs as medical equipment, and I basically worked as an unofficial art director for the magazine. There’s a ton of my photography in the first issue.

“Unfortunately, the class didn’t have the chance to finish the magazine by the end of the fall semester, so two students and myself from the CFP worked on the magazine through the 2017–2018 winter break to get it published by January. The three of us were really dedicated to making sure this magazine we had worked so hard on all semester made it into our readers’ hands. When I started working so closely with the magazine over the winter break, I became more and more passionate about the project.

When the Managing Editor of the CFP, Kim MacQueen, said she wanted to bring The Well back as a full biannual magazine published through the CFP, I went up to her office and said I wanted to be the Editor-in-Chief. The rest is history.”

The Well publishes articles, photo essays, recipes, and art about wellness for college-aged readers. The magazine aims to combat the perception that wellness is all about yoga and kale, and instead can be what you need it to be. The second issue of The Well was released on November 30, 2018.

We wanted to know what was the most challenging part of bringing the Fall 2018 Well Issue to fruition:

“Spreading awareness about the magazine and the importance of wellness has been our biggest hurdle. Even though we published an issue in Spring 2018, it was really a class project, and it didn’t get that much buzz or distribution around campus. My job this year has been to let people know that The Well is a magazine on campus, that we’re here to stay, and that people should care about it.”

“I also get a lot of questions from the writers on campus like, ‘Why would I write about wellness when I know nothing about it?’ and ‘I’m not an expert, how can I write about wellness?’ One of our missions is to get people to realize that they do in fact know about wellness—they just know about their own brand of wellness. Just because they have never meditated doesn’t mean they don’t practice wellness in their lives. If you’ve ever done something like reducing your stress by playing D&D, or experimenting with makeup to express yourself, or using a relaxation app on your phone, you’ve practiced some kind of wellness. I always tell the writers to just write about that one thing in their life that makes them happy, relaxed, or even energized.”

“The Well team is hoping our writers and readers start to realize just how interesting and accessible wellness can be.”

Want to learn more about the Center for Publishing‘s other initiatives? Check out the Weathervane and the Crossover!