Gallery • 3 Photos

Cover of "El Leon," Volume 4.

Every year, Mr. Alpers English classes prepare and write short stories to have published in a literary journal called “El Leon.” The class reads their short story to the class as their final, and at the end, there is a winner chosen in each class who wins a free copy of “El Leon” and their name on the “El Leon” trophy. This year’s addition is Volume 4, and it is available for free as an e-book on lulu.com. Lion Tales interviewed one of last year’s winners of the “El Leon” trophy, Noah Tanquary, and last year’s cover designer of El Leon, Ivan Perez.

Lion Tales asked Noah what it was like to write a story for El Leon and have it be published. He said, “I pretty much just tried to keep it how all the other students would think I pretty much tried to write it in a students perspective so other people could relate to the story and I’m glad that my story won. ”

Lion Tales also asked Noah how it felt to win out of a class of thirty students, he told me, “I didn’t think I would win, I knew people were going to like it because I wrote is so everyone would like it, but it’s cool that I won. I was surprised.”

Lion Tales also asked Noah how hard he worked on his winning story. He said, “I put enough effort into it, I definitely tried because I wanted to win, I wrote based on how badly I wanted to win.”

Noah’s story was definitely winning worthy, it was about the every day life of a high school student but in a students perspective, not over exaggerated like it is in movies or books.

Next I interviewed last years El Leon cover designer, and Senior, Ivan Perez. Ivan has a story also featured in last year’s volume, but he takes more lion pride in the cover. I asked Ivan how it felt to be asked to design the cover. He said, “I felt honored to design something for the school. That show cases as a school what we represent.”

Lion Tales also asked Ivan how he decided to design the cover, he said, “I decided to use a digital design in order to manipulate a lion in a different style, in order to stand out in a bright domestic superiority.”

It most certainly did stand out. The neon blues and yellows used for the cover made it very unique. The last thing I asked Ivan was how long it took him to make. He responded with, “Not long at all. Just about half an hour to finish. I’m skilled enough in Photoshop to make it quickly but well made.”

Volume 4 of El Leon is just as great as the first three and it is a great deal to have all those hand written stories by Lincoln Students for free on lulu.com. Just type in El Leon and download. That easy. This link will take you to it. If you want a hard copy you can also buy it for under twenty dollars. I am looking forward to see what creativity students next year will come up with.