This photograph shows four members of East Hampton High School’s student-run literary magazine, Beachplums. Left to right around the piano are Jim Cary, Andrea Schutz, Doug Lia, and, seated at the keys, Phil Markowitz. They gathered in the auditorium of the high school (now the middle school) to prepare for a reading at Guild Hall on May 26, 1969.
The Beachplums editor in chief, Doug Lia, and Amy Zerner assisted Phil Markowitz with arranging the program, which included poems from the May issue and musical selections. Around 20 students participated in the reading, and a reception followed. Admission was free for students and the parents of the performers.
After Beachplums was first published, on Feb. 20, 1967, the creative writing group read essays, short stories, and poems from their publication at Guild Hall six days later. At the time, they were still known as SMAAF, or Six Males and a Female, which was formed in April 1966. The group was initially made up of gifted students who were excused from English homework to “refine” their creative writing skills.
The following school year, SMAAF was opened up to the rest of the high school, with 22 students joining the group.
For the inaugural issue of Beachplums, Doug Lia and Cleon Dodge acted as the publication’s business managers, with Shirley Talmage and Lawrence McErlean as co-editors. Eunice Juckett served as faculty adviser. By the spring 1969 issue, Beachplums had added a junior high school coordinator. Barbara Bologna and Arthur Roth served as the Beachplums faculty club advisers that year.
Beachplums students continued to hold readings at Guild Hall until at least 1978, when The East Hampton Star’s May 4 school section noted the program was postponed and that “thought was being given to holding the program in the rarely used high school courtyard.”
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Christina Pellegrino is a librarian and archivist in the Long Island Collection.
