The Tiniest Coffee Shop was created in 2014. The Tiniest Coffee Shop was a way to make the public aware of the Missouri Western literary and arts journal, Canvas. The Tiniest Coffee Shop was located in Murphy Hall first floor elevator. Students handed out Dunkin’ Donut’s coffee to people who rode the elevator and read excerpts from Canvas. The idea to create The Tiniest Coffee Shop came from Marianne Kunkel, the Canvas Advisor.
“It was my idea that I borrowed from a friend when I was a student at the University of Nebraska,” Kunkel said. “I was a PHD student there, and we kind of adapted it for our purposes, but it was my idea to do it.” The Tiniest Coffee Shop was a way to get more people to know about Canvas.
“We do three outreach weeks a semester, and the first one is The Tiniest Coffee Shop, where we just hang out in the elevator, read poetry and offer students some free coffee so that we can raise awareness that we exist and we want peoples’ submissions,” said Crystal Crawford, a member of Canvas. There are about 10 Canvas students who took turns and stood outside the elevator for three days out of the week.
“I wanted be the editor of Canvas because I was in the creative writing class a couple years ago, and some of my work got put into the Canvas,” Canvas EIC Chris Pankiewicz said. “Once I got published, it really meant a lot to me, and I wanted to be more involved in Canvas, and also because I am a creative writing major and part of my major is to be the editor of Canvas.”
The Tiniest Coffee Shop was a great way for Canvas to reach out to the Western students, and maybe even persuade them to submit their own creative works.