When I first saw Natalia Barb, president of Quivira, the only word that came to my mind was “writer”. Yes, you can find almost all the characters a writer has when you look at her. She is a slim 5 foot 2 inch girl with dark brown eyes and almost black hair. It seems that all the nutrition in her body is used to support her creative writing. I saw her writer’s hands on the desk: some knuckles of her fingers are fairly prominent. She gave me a modest smile when I looked at her face to face.

“Natalia is very organized. She arranges many events, she takes leadership easily, and her leadership appeals to a range of students. She has brought the journal together earlier than any presidents of the organization with whom I have worked,” said Amy Sage Webb, faculty advisor of Quivira and co- director of the creative writing program at Emporia State University.

As a junior student majoring in English, emphasis in creative writing, Natalia became the president of Quivira this year and began her work on the student literary journal, which has the same name as its organization. The organization began to publish its journals when it first started in the 1900s. It provides an opportunity for student writers to socialize as a community and learn to be an artist by producing literary journals.

“But it’s hard to get people to submit to the journal. And so, that’s the biggest thing. It just running around and always talking to people like ‘Submit! Submit!’ All the time,” said Natalia. Last year, they tried to solve the problem by extending the deadline a little bit and got a lot more pieces when they did that. However, things are quite different this year due to their hard work in advertising.

Natalia and her fellows work so hard to advertise Quivira and to get people to submit. She announced the submission information for Quivira in almost every event that she went to or helped organized. And she also talked individually to people who write poetry or short stories. They put up flyers, posters, released a buzz in announcement and send emails. “And in my creative writing classes, I always, like almost pretty much once a week to remind people about it,” said Natalia. The advisors of Quivira: Dr. Webb and Dr. Rabas also helped a lot by pushing it in all of their creative writing classes.

The outcome is pleasantly satisfying. They have received about 120 submissions from about 40 different writers this year. And one of the authors that they selected is the winner of the creative writing scholarship. Natalia is very satisfied with this. “I was really happy with what we got.” She repeated it at least three times with a big smile on her face.

As for the money, “it comes out from the student fee, very tiny percentage, I think,” said Natalia. Actually, it’s only 25 cents that every student pays to help produce the journal. They used to be on a dean’s grant. The dean is the person that runs in the administration area (“dean”). The dean of college was the one that decided whether or not Quivira got any money for its journal. However, thanks to ESU Associated Student Government not too long ago, Quivira received a wide item fund from student fees so that every year, they will get guaranteed money to be able to publish their journal. “We don’t put any bullshit ads or anything like that. Some literary journals do, but we don’t really need to,” said Natalia.

This year, they are trying to do a lot more stuff with the other organizations. Their plan is to work closely with some organizations such as the Multicultural Affairs Department and the Black Student Organization and Hispanic Student Organization to get more people involved in creative arts. They are also trying to have a closer relationship with the art department to build a bridge between the English Apartment and Art Apartment to have more people get involved and contribute to the journal.

It seems that to be a president is not an easy job: you must make a clear decision on some vague topic and organize every meeting. They used to have those organized meetings in Memorial Union. But since it began being reconstructed, they move to Plum Hall in one of the classrooms. As to off campus meetings, which are usually workshop meetings, they usually meet in a café called The Inner Bean, because it has a good environment to read poetry and to talk about it. “Workshop meeting is like you bring a poem or short story and read it to everybody, and then everyone will discuss the positive aspect of it and then give you positive criticism. So you get feedback, which is really nice,” said Natalia. Those kinds of meetings have a creative environment that encourages everyone to write creatively and read energetically.

As to Natalia, she is also a writer who writes creatively. One of her poems is even published in Evening Street Press, which is called Mamma. The poetry is mainly about her mom’s early life when she and her sister were being raised. Their family did not let them speak their mother language, Spanish, because they want them to be Americanized. As a result, they lost their language. The poem tells a story that is quite different from all the other stories. It ends with tragedy. “It’s sad to me, because at the time they didn’t really think about the impact that was goanna have, they just want them to be able to go to school and not be different,” said Natalia.

She has her own view of literary art that is really unique. When we talked about it, she became very involved and her deep, dark brown eyes looked somewhere far behind me. It was more like mumbling. You can feel that your thought has been connected with hers and get that information directly and abstrusely. “It’s the opposite of what you do when you go to war,” she tried to explain, “You know when you go to war you are go out to destroy something. When you involved yourself in art in creativity, you are going out to create something. And when you share with somebody else something happens like when somebody really understands what you are writing about that you feel connected to the rest of the world.” Perhaps that’s the reason why she is always interested in creative writing.

Usually, she will wait until she gets an idea to write something. But now she tends to look for stuff such as prompts and force herself to write at least a page in her notebook every day. She uses that as some of the inspirations for her poem. Right now, she writes a lot about her family in a free verse style. She tries to write about the way people would talk without so much fancy words. “I’m still learning.” She said. “Poetry isn’t about rhyme or meter, or even about imagery, it’s about saying something true.”

As a Quiviran (a member of Quivira), Natalia tells me a story behind the organization’s name, which surprised me. It is said when Coronado first came to the United States on his search for gold, he came up from Mexico and entered the first corner region in Arizona and valley area. However, Coronado didn’t even find any gold there. Then, he was told by an Indian man that there is a place in the Midwestern region specifically Kansas space around Wichita area where there was a land of gold and it was called Quivira. And the people there were called Quivirans. However, when Coronado actually got to Kansas, there was no gold. The Indian has misunderstood what he was looking for, and thought he was looking for a land of richness. For the time, the Quivirans were very wealthy. They have plenty of food and water and were able to trade from a large regional area. And that’s where the organization is named after.

Maybe the organization has its name because people wish literary art in Kansas can be colorful and creative just like their ancestor’s land. And Natalia is one of the Quivirans that grows up from it and will lead the organization to go further.