| The Massachusetts Review | |
|---|---|
| Discipline | Literary journal |
| Language | English |
| Edited by | Jim Hicks |
| Publication details | |
| Publisher | University of Massachusetts Amherst (United States) |
| Publication history | 1959-present |
| Frequency | Quarterly |
| Indexing | |
| ISSN | 0025-4878 |
| Links | |
The Massachusetts Review is a literary quarterly founded in 1959 by a group of professors from Amherst College, Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.[1] It receives financial support from Five Colleges, Inc., a consortium which includes Hampshire College as well as the other four institutions.
MR bills itself as "A Quarterly of Literature, the Arts, and Public Affairs." A key early focus was on civil rights as well as African-American history and culture; the Review published, among many others, W.E.B. Du Bois, Lucille Clifton, Martin Luther King, Jr., Gwendolyn Brooks, and Sterling A. Brown.[2] Sidney Kaplan, a founder of the Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts, was a founding member of MR as well; Ekwueme Michael Thelwell, also a founder of Afro-American Studies at UMass, continues to serve as a Contributing Editor.
In 1972, MR published a double issue, entitled Woman: An Issue, edited by Lisa Baskin, Lee Edwards, and Mel Heath, featuring work from Bella Abzug, Anaïs Nin, Tina Modotti, Angela Davis, Sonia Sanchez, Audre Lorde, and Norman Mailer. Recent special issues include the 2008 Especially Queer Issue (edited by John Emil Vincent, and featuring new work from Frank Bidart, Michael Moon, Jack Spicer, as well as an interview with Judith Butler and a conversation between Michael Snediker and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick) as well as the 2011 Casualty Issue (co-edited by Kevin Bowen and Jim Hicks, with work from Juan Goytisolo, John Berger, Yusef Komunyakaa, David Rabe, Nora Strejilevich, and Erri De Luca).
MR is known for visual as well as literary arts.[3] Its cover design was initially conceived by the sculptor and graphic artist Leonard Baskin, who contributed work throughout his career. Jerome Liebling – the photographer, filmmaker, and mentor to Ken Burns – was also an MR editor. Recent artists featured in magazine inserts include Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Whitfield Lovell, Anna Schuleit, and Dan Witz.
The Massachusetts Review has published eleven Nobel Prize winners, twenty-four Pulitzer Prize winners, and nine U.S. Poet Laureates. Influential individual works from its pages include Robert Frost’s “Somewhat Dietary,” Martin Luther King’s “Legacy of Creative Protest,” Jean-Paul Sartre’s “Black Orpheus,” Chinua Achebe’s “Image of Africa,” Roberto Fernández Retamar’s “Caliban,” and Adrienne Rich’s “Blood, Bread, and Poetry.”
The Council of Literary Magazine and Presses (CLMP, formerly CCLM) website notes that: "[In 1967, t]he Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines (CCLM) [was] founded by a board of magazine editors at the suggestion of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), to act as an NEA regranter. The signatories of the original letter of intent to the NEA [were] Reed Whittemore (The Carleton Miscellany, New Republic); Jules Chametzky (The Massachusetts Review); George Plimpton (The Paris Review); Robie Macauley (The Kenyon Review); and William Phillips (The Partisan Review).[4]
The magazine awards the Anne Halley Poetry prize to the best poem it published yearly; it also awards the Jules Chametzky Prize for Translation each year, alternating between its prose and poetry translations.
The current staff includes: Jules Chametzky, Editor Emeritus; Jim Hicks, Editor; Ellen Doré Watson, Poetry and Translation Editor; Michael Thurston, Fiction and Nonfiction Editor; Pam Glaven, Art Director; John Emil Vincent, Archivist and Editor-at-Large; Ata Moharreri, Managing Editor; Edwin Gentzler, Translation Editor; Corinne Demas, Fiction Editor; and Deborah Gorlin, Poetry Editor.