Corvallis-based women’s literary magazine CALYX held a symposium and gala at Corvallis Museum March 14 to celebrate their 50-year herstory of giving voices to the unheard.

The symposium and gala occurred in conjunction with a new exhibit at Corvallis Museum about the publishing company: “CALYX, Inc.: A Herstory of Radical Resilience.” The exhibit opened Feb. 28 and will run until March 29 of next year.

The exhibit includes CALYX artifacts, documents and interactive displays that span the entire herstory of the company. Every journal, anthology and book CALYX has published adorned the walls of the exhibit in chronological order.

According to CALYX Chair of the Board of Directors Beth Russell, the exhibit wouldn’t have been possible without Oregon State University interns like Celeste Anderle, Evan Dukes, Kendall Kelly and Kera Nelson.

Master’s student studying environmental arts and humanities, Celeste Anderle, painted a mural for the event.

“The mural is an organizational chart — org chart,” Anderle said. “It was inspired by an org chart that Beth drew herself. … Someone in the Board of Directors wanted there to be an organization chart so that they can, you know, show people how the magazines run.”

Anderle started on her project back in October 2025.

“The original plan for the mural was to have all the names of everyone who had ever worked in the magazine,” she said. “So when you’re standing far away, it all looks like one solid color, but when you get close enough, you can see the names.”

Anderle said that proved to be a challenge. She had used InDesign in the past, but she couldn’t get it to do what she wanted. After a conversation with Russell, Anderle said they agreed that adding the names was too much.

“I’m very happy we went in that direction, because I think the mural would have taken me a lot longer to get done,” Anderle said. “I don’t even think I would have been able to get it done.”

While the final mural didn’t feature any names, a nearby iPad was equipped with the names of everyone involved with every issue of CALYX.

The data on the iPad was put together by a recent OSU graduate who majored in Design and Innovation Management, Kera Nelson. Nelson is also a former employee of The Daily Barometer.

“When I first met with Beth, she showed me the physical archive of journals and books,” Nelson said. “Everything was originally physical, so there wasn’t a centralized digital record. So I went through every CALYX journal issue and created a spreadsheet listing every contributor — authors, artists, editors, board members, volunteers, prize winners and judges. There are over 100 journal issues, so it took a while.”

According to Nelson, despite how long the project took, it was really rewarding.

Nelson said that reading the introductions to each issue helped her to understand how CALYX evolved over time.

“I created a digital list of all of the contributors who have ever been in a CALYX journal,” Nelson said. “So that was the authors, artists, the board of directors, editors, prize winners, prize judges, volunteers. Everything like that. There’s over 100 journal issues that I went through. I was flipping through a lot of physical copies, but I was also able to read a lot of the work that was in there.”

Nelson said she had to record over 3,000 names of contributors to a spreadsheet.

Fourth-year creative writing major Kendall Kelly said she used skills she’s developed studying for her new media communications minor and made things at the CALYX exhibit more accessible.

“I take files from ‘Voices of CALYX,’ which is on their website,” Kelly said. “It’s a collection where you can listen to poems and excerpts read by the authors themselves. There are more than 200 recordings. I take those files and format them so they match the exhibit design — the same background color, the same fonts — and I add captions and transcriptions.”

Kelly said she also worked on a video with clips from an interview with CALYX co-founder Margarita Donnelly.

Kelly said she went through the interview to find the interesting parts and compiled the clips into a 12-minute-long video for the event.

“It’s been great interning for CALYX,” Kelly said. “They’re just very welcoming, and I love everything that they stand for.”

Fourth-year English major Evan Dukes said they worked on the art archive for the exhibit.

“All of the art submitted to CALYX from 1976 until about 2005 was stored on film slides,” Dukes said. “My job was to scan, categorize and upload those. I organized them digitally so the team could select pieces they wanted.”

Dukes said they are also working on categorizing periodicals.

“I’m hoping to create a system where public community members can come in and browse them, because right now they’re basically just sitting in a closet and aren’t very accessible,” Dukes said.

Established in 1976 by Margarita Donnelly, Barbara Baldwin, Beth McLagan and Meredith Jenkins, CALYX has published works from thousands of women+ (including nonbinary and transgender people) “with a vision to provide a publication that celebrates the excellence and diversity of women’s literature and art,” according to their website.

Among the artists and writers whose work CALYX has published are: Nobel Laureate Wislawa Symborska, Ursula K. LeGuin, Barbara Kingsolver and Jean Hegland. CALYX was also the first to publish color art reproductions of Mexican Artist Frida Kahlo in the United States.

The event started with an Aubade — a poem welcoming the rising sun — sung by local treble choir Jubilate!

According to Russell, opening a ceremony with a song is a “sacred tradition” that is meant to cleanse a sacred space for a gathering.

The choir was followed by CALYX Board Member Rachel Spitler reading “For Calyx,” the poem Ursula K. LeGuin gifted CALYX on its 13th anniversary in 1989.

Other speakers for the opening ceremony included Executive Director of Benton County Museums Jessica Houghen and CALYX Senior Editor Brenna Crotty, who had the solemn task of announcing the recent passing of CALYX co-founder Meredith “Marnie” Jenkins.

After guests got to mingle and see the exhibits, the symposium featured speeches from women involved with CALYX, a panel of past and present editors on the editorial process and readings from women published by CALYX, including Jean Hegland, who read from her novel Into the Forest, which was first published by CALYX and has been translated into over a dozen languages.

Rachel Baldwin, daughter of CALYX co-founder Barbara Baldwin, read the introduction and some poems from her mother’s poem collection Harvest.

At the “Funding 50 More Years: A CALYX Glitterati Gala” which started at 6 p.m., guests enjoyed more poetry readings, anecdotes about CALYX and the musical stylings of local musicians such as Julie Williams and CantHardlyWait.

After crowning Miss Glitterati for the event, the emcees announced the winners of the raffles and silent auction. The main prize for the night was a signed print of LeGuin’s poem “For Calyx.”

Russell led the guests in singing “Happy Birthday” to CALYX before offering up a Champagne toast to 50 more years for the publishing company.