When Luke Homans initially approached the staff of the Gargoyle, the University of Michigan’s long-running student humor magazine, to express his interest in joining the masthead, the first thing they asked him was, “Are you funny?”
Homans, now the Gargoyle’s editor-in-chief, says he was pleasantly taken aback by the question — an unusual one in professional settings. He remembers responding with something like, “Who’s really to say?”
At the time, Homans knew he wanted to get involved in something literary at U-M.
“I’ve always known that I’m a humanities person and a writer at heart,” he says.
He discovered the mixed media publication at FestiFall, the annual U-M fair where students explore campus organizations, and was immediately drawn to the Gargoyle because “it seemed like a publication with a lot of freedom and a lot of personal expression,” Homans says now.
After FestiFall, Homans attended the Gargoyle’s first mass meeting, “and it just went from there.”
He wrote his first piece for the Gargoyle in the fall of 2021 and progressed quickly. When a position as content editor became available the next semester, Homans applied and was accepted. He progressed to managing editor for two years before becoming editor-in-chief (EIC). However, you’ll rarely see Homans listed with his actual title on the masthead, instead opting for comical replacements such as “expert micromanager” and “open to inconsistency.”
As EIC, Homans is responsible for overseeing “all of the content that goes into the magazine,” a position that entails leading editorial meetings, recruiting new staff, managing funding issues, and all the other minutia involved in putting out a publication.
“We have a lovely editorial board, who are all wonderful and capable at their jobs, and they do so much work. … But at the end of the day, the buck stops with me,” Homans says.
Homans plans to graduate in May with a double major in English and history and describes his experience at the Gargoyle as “a good way to dip my toes into the professional world.” The senior says he’d ultimately like to pursue a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing before venturing into publishing, media, or something else involved with writing and editing.
“I know that’s very broad and very vague,” he acknowledges, laughing, but he is also quick to stress the importance of the humanities as a general discipline.
His experience as EIC of the Gargoyle has provided Homans with invaluable insights regarding “the ins and outs of running an actual publication and thinking about advertisements and printing and budgetary restrictions,” he says.
But the magazine’s impact in Homans’ own life, at least, goes beyond the professional.
“Every piece of every magazine is so important to me because of how intimately I know all of the people on staff, and the fact that it’s so collaborative,” he says.
Gargoyle staffers put a major emphasis on “building community,” Homans says — one factor that has inspired profound loyalty among Gargoyle alums (of whom the notable playwright Arthur Miller, ’38, HLHD’56, is one illustrious example).
“What appealed to me about the Gargoyle,” Homans says, “was the life within it, and the heart and soul, and the fact that people are there to create art.”
Natalia Holtzman, MSI’19, is a freelance writer based in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
