“The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off of our souls,” Pablo Picasso.

The Prospector Daily is proud to welcome The Tavern, a section dedicated to works of fiction, poetry, photography, design, music and all other original pieces of creativity. This is a chance for UTEP students, faculty and staff to publish their work with an award-winning publication.

All artists deserve a medium that allows their voices to be heard, and The Prospector hopes to provide that outlet to support the growing creative culture of El Paso.

We understand that art has a very broad definition, but please keep in mind that all submissions are subject to editing and we reserve the right to refuse publishing should pieces be deemed offensive (i.e. racist, sexist or something even college students would consider inappropriate).

All pieces can be submitted through email: [email protected]. Please include a brief description of who you are—where you are from, age, major and classification or title if you are faculty or staff, and a mugshot of yourself to go along with your work.

Here are some criteria for submission:

Fiction/Short stories: We journalists are especially fond of anything that is well written. Short stories can be emailed in a Word document and we ask that stories be no more than 2,000 words (a little over that limit doesn’t hurt anyone though). Editors will review your work and may make changes, but we will make you aware of any changes before we publish your piece. If you have your own original art to accompany your story, you may submit that as well, or we will have an artist or photographer design pieces to illustrate it. Stories may be in English or Spanish.

Poetry: There isn’t really much we can say about poetry. Poems can evoke emotions in a simple sentence or pages of text. But we ask that poems be a minimum Haiku-length and no more than 300 words. If you have your own original art to accompany your poem you may submit that as well, or we will have an artist or photographer design pieces to illustrate it. Poems may be in English or Spanish.

Photography/Design/Art: Journalists are also very fond of good imagery. You can submit a single photograph or a gallery of photos (please no more than 10) representing your work. Every photo must contain a caption with the title of the piece, the artist’s name and a description of the subject matter. Photography must also contain information on where the photo was taken and all persons in the photo must be identified. Photos must be submitted as a JPEG file, smaller than 1MB or 580px in height. Please keep photo content appropriate. If you do not feel your own photographs of your art are up to par, we may be able to arrange to have one of our own photographers take them. A description of the idea behind the art is also appreciated.

Music: All music must be your original work. You can either email the audio file or send us a link to a video of your performance (a YouTube link is preferred).  We may also be able to arrange a video session to record your performance, but we would need to hear audio of your music beforehand. We will feature at most four of your original songs in one post.

Should you have other pieces of creative work and they do not fall under these categories, we’d still like to hear from you. Email us a description of your idea and we may be able to work something out.