Blackbird (online journal)

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Blackbird

URL	http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/
Commercial?	non-profit
Type of site	An online journal for literature and the arts
Registration	Optional registration to receive email notices of new featured content.
Owner	Hosted by Virginia Commonwealth University
Created by	Jointly by the Department of English at Virginia Commonwealth University and New Virginia Review, Inc.

Blackbird (an online journal of literature and the arts) is an internet journal that posts two issues a year, May 1st and November 1st. During the six month run of an issue, additional content appears as "featured" content. Previous issues are archived online in their entirety.

Blackbird publishes fiction, poetry, plays, interviews, reviews, and art by both new and established writers and artists. The journal frequently includes streaming audio and video content, including readings, interviews, and art lectures. Each fall issue forefronts work by, and about, the late Larry Levis. The journal's reading period for poetry and fiction closes between April 15th and September 15th. Unsolicited reviews, plays, and art work are not considered.

Blackbird is published jointly by the Creative Writing Program of the Department of English at Virginia Commonwealth University in partnership with New Virginia Review, Inc., a nonprofit literary arts organization based in Richmond, Virginia. Its founding editors included Gregory Donovan, Mary Flinn, William Tester, M.A. Keller and Jeff Lodge. The journal is staffed by employees of the two sponsoring organizations as well as by interns and volunteers.

Blackbird was one of the first literary journals to be included in the LOCKSS international archive.

Blackbird received AP Wire coverage for its publication of a previously unpublished sonnet of Sylvia Plath in their Fall 2006 issue. Entitled Ennui, the poem was composed during Plath's early years at Smith College.

Artists whose lectures or documentations of process or installations appear in Blackbird include Mark Harris, Richard Roth, Sheila Pepe, and Karina Peisajovich. A piece for voices by New York playwright Romulus Linney appeared in the inaugural 2002 issue. Norman Dubie's book of poetry, The Spirit Tablets of Goa Lake, appeared serially across three issues spanning 2002-2003.The journal has published work by recent Pulitzer Prize winning poets Natasha Tretheway and Claudia Emerson.

Ron Antonucci, in the Library Journal, describes Blackbird it as "one of the most successful, well-assembled online literary magazines available... it is graphically attractive and has attracted writers of stature such as . . . Reginald Shepherd and Gerald Stern." [1]