Prairie Schooner releases mobile app

            Prairie Schooner, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's literary journal, will release its mobile app on May 1. The mobile app, titled "Global Schooner: A World of Prairie Schooner Writers," features an interactive global map that pinpoints the location of authors from past Prairie Schooner issues, offering users unprecedented access to author biographies, videos, interviews and more.

            "Global Schooner" features profiles from more than 300 authors who have been published in the prestigious journal run by the UNL English Department for the last 87 years. Forty-five author profiles have expanded content, including audio and video of exclusive interviews and readings. The app also provides links to Prairie Schooner's blog, podcast and other online content. App users may purchase an issue of Prairie Schooner or subscribe to the quarterly using the app.

            The mobile app will become available for download on iTunes on May 1 at midnight and is free. Users can pay for the Guide to Customs feature, which allows access to additional content for $2.99. The app features pinpoints on a Google Earth interface that designate the location of authors published in Prairie Schooner. By clicking on pinpoints, app users can read the bios of authors and access other digital media compiled by Prairie Schooner.

            "Prairie Schooner's tagline is 'Writing that Moves You' and this app does just that," said Marianne Kunkel, managing editor and app creator. "What we've created is cutting-edge -- a table of contents that is sortable by our contributors' places of origin, each one pinpointed on a user-friendly spinnable globe. Browsing our journal on our app turns readers into literary travelers."

            App users can access audio and video files featuring Martha Collins, Eudora Welty, Raymond Carver, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Nance van Winckel and others. New content will be uploaded to the app in concordance with the release of each quarterly issue of the print journal.

            In addition, Prairie Schooner's podcast, "Air Schooner," conducted interviews with Li-Young Lee, Roxane Gay, Nikola Madzirov and Sudeep Sen that will be available with the upgrade to Guide to Customs.

            The mobile app and digital initiative represent Prairie Schooner's desire as a publication to extend its influence into digital and online media, and to reflect its growing presence within the international community, said poet Kwame Dawes, editor in chief of Prairie Schooner.

            "One of the exciting opportunities that digital literary publishing allows for is the chance to make a reality the global community of letters," Dawes said. "The Global Schooner is a genius app idea that capitalizes on the app technology to celebrate our global commitment to writers and to literature from various parts of the world."

            The mobile app was designed by David Levi of Doubleapps, a company based in Knoxville, Tenn.,  that specializes in map-based smartphone app design. Levi explained that the Global Schooner app is part of a progression of his desire to design user-interfaces that use maps. "The app interface uses a pretty cool animated 3-D globe to show where various authors live," Levi said. "I think this gives the user a good sense of the diversity of authors featured in the app."

Writer: Ryan Oberhelman