The mood is celebratory among the staff of the New Brunswick literary journal The Fiddlehead, as the publication’s 80th anniversary approaches.
On Feb. 8, the magazine opened an exhibition to the Fredericton public displaying the evolution of the cover artwork through the years.
From its origins as a small pamphlet shared among friends to the widespread magazine it is now, The Fiddlehead has grown up along with its artwork.
Caitlyn Sinclair, a publishing intern at The Fiddlehead, has been working on the exhibit since last fall. Her job entailed cataloguing artwork, reviewing primary documents from the UNB archives and Arts Centre as well as creating the accompanying booklets on display in the library.
“It’s been a really wonderful experience so far,” she said. “I really learned a lot about the journal’s history and about all the people who have been involved in it, which has been really incredible.”
As a student in the publishing certificate program at UNB, Sinclair chose The Fiddlehead for her internship because of its on-campus involvement and rich history.
First published in 1945, the journal’s mission has been to give space to up-and-coming authors who are determined to share their work with the world.
The Fiddlehead publishes four issues per year at the University of New Brunswick and its sections include creative nonfiction, fiction, poetry and reviews as well as a short introduction from the editor.
“I also like to write, so it’s nice to know that there is somewhere who wants new authors,” said Sinclair.
A staff member at the Fredericton Public Library reached out to managing editor Ian LeTourneau in 2023, offering The Fiddlehead to use their space for their 80th anniversary.
“That really kind of sparked us and [we] thought, ‘Well, what could we do?’ It was pretty obvious [that] covers would be a neat way to show off the evolution and all the kinds of features over the years,” said LeTourneau.
LeTourneau shared that for the first 72 Fiddlehead issues, each cover had the same image, and then they started experimenting.
“They had different designs that would last for six issues, until about issue 128 where they decided to start showing one artist per issue to display on the cover and that’s happened since then,” he said.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, issues of The Fiddlehead also contained interior artwork consisting of sketches, drawings and black-and-white recreations of oil paintings.
LeTourneau began working at The Fiddlehead in 2012 as an administrative assistant, which involved taking care of layout and design. In 2019, he took over as managing editor where he has remained ever since.
He remembers the “very huge change” from mailed-in to digital submissions in 2018 and 2019.
“The mail used to come every day and [during] contest time, we’d get big bins filled with mail, each one had a cheque with it, so there was a lot of processing time. Now it’s all just done [online].”
The Fiddlehead is currently working on its summer 2025 issue and planning for a special summer 2026 issue centred around the experiences of those with disabilities in hopes of acquiring a guest editor from the disabled community.
When asked what advice he has to give to writers hoping to be a part of The Fiddlehead’s history in the future, LeTourneau said to keep sending their work out and not take rejections to heart.
“I find writers do learn a lot from the responses they get,” he said. “It’s really difficult to be published, but if you’re determined, you certainly can.”
