We are accepting submissions from all students (regardless of when you went abroad!) for the online blog "Tales from the Road."

Please check the submission guidelines posted under Categories (right column) for further information.

The deadline for our first edition is January 18, 2010. Any submissions after that date will be considered for future editions.

Submit to Tales from the Road

Download file

Download file

Tales from the Road also draws from a rich literary field of authors, writers and artists that have used creative work to reflect on their own personal experiences (whether abroad or at home). By acknowledging this rich literary tradition, we hope to encourage students to see literary studies as both personal and intellectual.

Tales from the Road is inspired, in part, by the well-known poem The Road not Taken by celebrated poet Robert Frost. Please follow the poem below.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
and sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
and looked down one as far as I could
to where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
and having perhaps the better claim
because it was grassy and wanted wear;
though as for that, the passing there
had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
in leaves no feet had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less travelled by,
and that has made all the difference

It is our belief that students that engage in international experience follow Frost's example of taking the road "less travelled by." In order to celebrate this process, we have created this online resource.

Submissions:
All work submitted to Tales from the Road must relate to an undergraduate English major's or minor's (or International student studying English) experience, confrontation or understanding of international education, study or work (including volunteer work). Creative works can embrace the actual process of going abroad, thinking about the experience once in the U.S., working with immigrants after having been abroad, etc. We are open to a variety of topics and interests. Any questions concerning submission content should be sent to talesfromtheroadumn@gmail.com with "Tales from the Road question" in the subject line.

A suggested 1,500 word limit is emphasized for all literary works. Any visual or multimedia pieces should be sent in translatable file formatting (.jpg, etc).

For prose pieces, please limit yourself to one or two entries. Works of poetry should be limited to several shorter pieces or one large piece. All visual and multimedia pieces with multiple parts will be judged as a whole.

Plagiarized material is subject to University of Minnesota academic policy relating to plagiarized material.

All creative works should be edited and free of grammatical errors and other compositional mistakes. Our committee will work with students on minor grammatical changes/stylistic changes but any major revisions will not be made or addressed by our committee.

Publications:
Publication will occur twice throughout the school year. We will publish at the beginning of each term. Individual publication deadlines will be listed online in the Updates category. Any prizes, contests and other special publication circumstances will also be posted in the Updates category.

Submit:
All submissions can be sent through the following link:
Submit to Tales from the Road

Please allow time for our staff to review all entries before we respond. Typically allow up to one month between the deadline and announcements of new online publications.

We look forward to reviewing your creative work and encourage all undergraduate English majors and minors to submit!

Why is it called Tales from the Road? It is inspired by Robert Frost's well-known poem "The Road Not Taken". We believe that students that have the courage, innovation and ambition to step outside of their normal University setting should celebrate their efforts. This is also students' chance to get published online (which looks great for resumes and graduate school applications).

All entries will be reviewed by the Undergraduate Studies office staff before publishing. Entries of fiction, non-fiction, poetry along with photo essays, multi-media content and other medias are welcomed. Students are encouraged to submit their work through the following link:

Submit to
Tales from the Road

We encourage travelers from all walks of life to submit the best of their creative work.