A word about our history and process:

The Dawson English Journal was founded in the fall of 2010, after Dawson student (now alumnus) Matthew Chisling suggested to Dawson English teacher Rebecca Million that the essays that students write for their English courses might be worth publishing somewhere. Seeing as so much effort, so much good writing, and so many great ideas go into students’ essays, it seemed a shame that nobody ever read them except professors and the students themselves.  So Ms. Million worked with Matthew, and later with a founding group of four editors, to launch the Dawson English Journal and solicit submissions from the Dawson community.

Since 2015 there has been a team of faculty advisers. As of the 2023-24 this team is made up of Jessica Cadieux, Lorne Roberts, and Rebecca Million.

Each term we issue a call for submissions, then the editorial committee (made up of Dawson student volunteers) does a blind* reading and evaluation of all the submissions, and gets together in a meeting to decide which essays will be published in the next issue.  While the quality of all submissions is impressive, the editors put a great deal of effort and consideration into choosing a limited number of the best essays we receive.  The editors then go on to edit each submission, though they limit the editing to corrections, and do not make substantive changes to the work of the student authors.

As we go forward, the Journal continues to grow and change.  With each issue we receive more submissions, and ever since our fall 2013 issue we have been accepting academic writing that is not in essay form, such as articles and reviews.  We are always looking for new editors to join our editorial committee, and we continue to appreciate the support of the English Department and the larger Dawson community.

All academic material on this web site comes from contributing authors.  Any views expressed therein are those of the authors and are not necessarily shared by the editorial committee, faculty, or administration of Dawson College.

Any uses and or copies of this Journal in whole or in part must include the customary bibliographic citation, including acknowledgement of author, date and article title.

* A blind reading means that all identifying information is removed from the assignments before the editors read them. The information is only returned to the text after all editing has been completed.