Q Magazine, Yale’s LBGTQ-interest publication, may be new to the student journalism scene, but you wouldn’t know it. The magazine’s Spring 2011 issue snagged a Magazine Pacemaker award this weekend at the National College Media Convention in Orlando.

The Associated Collegiate Press presents Pacemaker awards—considered the “Pulitzer Prizes of student journalism”—annually to publications in a number of categories, from websites to newspapers to yearbooks. Magazine Pacemaker winners are selected based on diverse and innovative content, writing and design.

Mara Dauphin ’12, current editor in chief and the managing editor for the victorious issue, said that the theme of the winning issue was “gender presentation.”

The issue’s cover featured a close-up headshot of a bearded middle-aged man in elaborate makeup. The headline referred readers to page 14 for an interview with Damiana Laroux, a drag queen who also works as a late-night security officer in Bass and Sterling Libraries.

None of the magazine’s staff was able to attend the conference in Orlanda; instead, Dauphin said she heard about the award on Monday from Jake Conway ’11, the magazine’s founder.

“I got a call from Jake yesterday saying ‘Congratulations!’” she said. “It was really exciting.”

Jake Conway ’11 founded Q Magazine, which publishes once per semester, last fall as “a resource for students on campus and a celebration of the diversity and vibrancy of the queer community.” The next issue of Q Magazine will hit campus immediately following Thanksgiving break, Dauphin said.