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Sharing the same birthday as her father, Jana Elfenbein is commonly found listening to rap music on her i-pod and purchasing unnecessary items from infomercials on the television. She was born and raised in New Jersey with her mother, father, sister, and yellow Labrador named Marco-Polo. Jana is in her junior year at Muhlenberg College and one day wishes to have her own talk show and combine Chelsea Handler’s humor with Martha Stewart’s domestic ability and Kelly Ripa’s perfect hair and hot body.
Emily Lubin is the Submissions Coordinator/Managing Editor of Popped. In her spare time, she enjoys sheets of egyptian cotton and instructional hula hooping classes in Prospect Park.
Despite growing up in Staten Island, New York, where wife beater’s and big chains donning crucifixes are uniform, Caroline has grown into a well adjusted, educated and individual young woman. Growing up in such a stereotypical, MTV reality show environment, Caroline went through her own phases in which she gelled her hair back too tight and wore velour track suits but soon grew into a “Led Zeppelin loving, incense burning, tree hugging hippie,” as her father puts it. She currently attends Muhlenberg College where she is majoring in Media and Communications and minoring in English-writing. After college, she plans to drive cross-country in her Honda civic and settle in California where her career aspirations are two fold. She would like to rise up to resemble theatrical agent Ari Gold, from HBO’s original series Entourage, or to write a billion dollar grossing book series like Twilight or Harry Potter, but with much better narrative quality and literary value.
I grew up in two congruent yet contradicting worlds. On the exterior I lived in an upper middleclass suburban town in Wilton, Connecticut where it was not uncommon to pop the collar of your polo shirt and spend summer days by the pool at your family’s country club. Inside this world of Stepford wife suburbia I lived with my eccentric ex-hippie parents that knew a much different Wilton than the one I saw every day at high school. On weekends my Father would paint landscapes on our porch while my Mom taught yoga classes in our living room. I was shaped by these two worlds: one sparked in me a desire for perfection, a perpetual ambition to constantly reach for more in order to obtain a life of personal and professional achievement. The other grounded me in the everyday moments of life, the quality and the experience of living. It inspired in me an interest in art, poetry, and music and a desire to capture the essence of actuality in an image or a sequence of words. I still struggle between these two conflicting identities as I begin to figure out life and my place in this world.
My name is Ashley. I’m not the norm: I’m a political science major whose thoughts are mostly occupied by whatever seems pertinent at the time. At the moment, I’m longing to repeat Thanksgiving Dinner. Turkey and cheesecake are my favorite. I’m not really into pumpkin anything, but I hear the vitamins in it make your skin appear radiant. Back to my longing to re-do the day filled with amazing food and real meat (sorry vegetarians and vegans), relatively good TV movies, straight love from the family, and time to finally sit down with a good magazine. This leads me to Popped. It has become my new source of procrastination and has lessened my Facebook addiction. There’s just something really convenient and scholarly about using the internet to view the magazine. So, basically, I hope I can pass on the desire for a Thanksgiving repeat and a healthy addiction to Popped!
Jillian Bevacqua is a junior at Muhlenberg College and a former summer camp counselor who remembered her roots in writing “Caleb’s Corner,” a work of sudden fiction for Paul Martin’s Spring 2009 Poetry and Fiction Writing course. She is a Media and Communication major and Creative Writing minor who has moved on from camp counseling to focus on her journalism aspirations by serving as Managing Editor of The Muhlenberg Weekly and taking way too many writing intensive courses.
Jennifer Raimo is a senior at Muhlenberg College. Her major is Psychology, her minor Creative Writing but her passion is zombies. When she isn’t delving into the depths of the human psyche or sitting under weeping willows writing long winded poems she can be found researching the zombie apocalypse and plotting how she would survive. She believes that someday zombies will try to take over the world and that her research is extremely important. For now though during her free time she enjoys snowboarding in the winter, seasonal allergies in the spring, bar crawls in the summer and raking leaves in the fall.
Jennie Sutton is a junior at Muhlenberg College. She is an English Major and Creative Writing Minor. Her work has been published in Muses, the Muhlenberg Political Science journal, and she once won an advertising contest in fifth grade. She really likes lasagna.
After previously contemplating truck driving, fashion design, and farming as career directions, by the age of seven I decided instead that I wanted to be a writer and haven’t swayed since. Books have been a lifelong passion of mine, and when I’m not reading or writing, I also love arts and crafts, baking brownies, playing Scattegories, driving on country roads, and walking in the woods. A semester abroad in Scotland fostered in me a permanent love of shortbread, castles, and the song “Loch Lomond.” My favorite books are The Blue Castle, Wuthering Heights, Little Women, and Ella Enchanted, and my favorite smells are wood smoke, old books, tomato leaves, and anything baking.
I thrive on orange juice, blackberry tea, hot cider and big warm blankets. I think Starbucks Holiday Cups are magnificent and a necessity for a cold winter. I often spend entire weekends not moving from my couch at home in Massachusetts. I've discovered the joy of goofy hats and on Saturday mornings I run around my house in pajamas singing showtunes. Homemade cookies are the cure for anything, and I don't understand the appeal of warm milk. When I'm too lazy to get dressed, I wear big oversized comfy sweaters. I play/listen to a lot of music... maybe even too much, and the soundtrack to my life is amazing. I smile a lot and like chunky and colorful necklaces. I can never seem to afford anything and I miss the days of buying CDs. Fall is probably my favorite season because of colored leaves and apple picking and because it seems to change everybody, at least for a little while. When my iPod doesn't work, my mood spirals downwards. I love museums but tend to feel artistically inadequate when at the MFA in Boston (but that is to be expected). The feeling of home gives me the warm and fuzzies. The sound of steel drums instantly delights my soul and sometimes there is nothing like a lazy beach day. And I love the simple things in life, like warm fuzzy socks on a snowy day.
I’m that weird girl who likes to read and correct her friend’s papers. Maybe it’s because it makes me feel smart. Maybe it’s because I just like to play with words. I still prefer a pen to a computer for editing. There’s something about physically writing on a piece of paper that just feels right. I enjoy writing fiction and poetry and recently I’ve been testing out the waters of non-fiction and journalistic writing. I love pretty much everything artistic from theater to jewelry design to scrap-booking. In my final year here at Muhlenberg I’m finishing up a major in Philosophy and a double minor in Asian Traditions and Creative Writing. Anyone have any career suggestions? Please?
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