AACC’s Amaranth Literary Magazine won first place among large colleges in the Eastern Division of the Community College Humanities Association’s Literary Magazine Competition.

Five AACC student submissions also won individual awards for pieces presented in the 2016-2017 Volume 42 edition.

This year, Amaranth surpassed “The Sligo Journal” from Montgomery College, which won first place last year when Amaranth placed second.

“We swept the Eastern Division for script writing,” Dr. Garrett Brown, Amaranth’s faculty adviser and an English professor, said.

Former students Eli Jacob, Michael Gioffre and Breanna Liddy won first, second and third in the category, respectively.

The students wrote all of the screen plays during Brown’s Writing for Stage and Screen class.

In addition, former AACC student Mary McKiel’s “Water’s Edge” won second place for photography.

And Ben Staisloff, 2011-2012’s Amaranth assistant editor and layout and design editor, earned an honorable mention for his photograph “Flight.”

Amaranth dedicated this issue to Staisloff, who passed away earlier this year.

“[Last year] was my first year being editor and I didn’t want to change a lot,” former Amaranth editor-in-chief and current contributor Jonas Pallaro-Sonneborn said.

“I didn’t want to go to off the rails because I didn’t know the whole process yet. And then [for the 2016-2017 issue] I started out and said let’s do something different, let’s make it really special, let’s have a cohesive framework.”

For Volume 42, Pallaro-Sonneborn said he wanted to move away from the simpler theme and framework of the previous edition. Volume 41 did not have a set theme to it.

“[For Volume 42] I was like, ‘We know how to do it right, let’s take a chance,’ and everyone pitched in,” Pallaro-Sonneborn said. “Everyone pushed ideas consistently. We were always voting on how to do different things; everyone was really engaged.”

Pallaro-Sonneborn credited Volume 42’s unique look to former layout and design editor Morgan Nakroshis.

Volume 42’s design is based on a road trip through space as a nod to Douglas Adams’ classic comedic science fiction novel “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” in which the number 42 plays a key role.

The cover art was designed by McKiel.

The edition also has 14 science fiction Easter eggs hidden throughout.

“I’m trying my very, very hardest to live up to last year’s journal,” Ren Bishop, Amaranth’s current editor-in-chief, said. “I have an entire staff behind me and our ideas together are incredible. … I want our journal to be a celebration of everything that this community has to offer. … It’s about the art and the creators of it.”

Copies of Amaranth: Volume 42 are located in Brown’s office in Humanities 113F.