On Tuesday, Goshen College’s Pinchpenny Press released three student chapbooks at a party held in the Koinonia Room of the Church-Chapel. To a full room, six students read excerpts from the books, and then sold and signed copies for the public.

Pinchpenny Press publishes chapbooks for students, faculty and friends of Goshen College. The program began in 1969 and has since produced 188 books.

Dominique Chew, a senior English major, wrote a book entitled “The Meaning of Grace,” which features poetry and prose centering around themes of race and her experiences on Study-Service Term in Senegal this past summer. “I didn’t know that I wanted to write until I went on SST. It became a way for me to process things,” said Chew. She was especially grateful for the talents of Jake P. Smucker and Mandy Schlabach in assisting her with design and artwork.

Kate Yoder, a senior English writing and art double major, published a book called “Bonehouse.” Yoder began working on “Bonehouse” during her first semester of college when she took her first creative writing class, but has produced it mainly this year.

“This book is a collection of prose and poetry that focuses on wordplay, memory and considering things from a unique perspective. It’s partly a memoir about making sense of my experiences, and partly commentary about questioning assumptions about what it means to exist as part of our society,” she said.

Besides writing and editing her own book, Yoder is also the English Department Horswell Fellow, which includes among other things overseeing Broadside and Pinchpenny boards and editing Red Cents, the literary magazine on campus.

Elizabeth Derstine, a junior English writing and communications double major, compiled and edited a work of short fiction entitled “Flash” for the Horswell Anthology. The stories in the book, originally written in Ann Hostetler’s Creative Nonfiction class last spring, are divided in categories by fewer than 800, 700 and 600 words.

“The stories feature the themes like identity, growing up and vulnerability,” explained Derstine. “The stories are powerful because each word was chosen intentionally because [the stories are] so short.” Derstine, Sara Albaba and Kolton Nay, seniors, read their flash stories at the party.

Pinchpenny Press will hold another release party on Tuesday, March 31 at 6:30 p.m. at the same location for three more books.