New England Review

ABOUT

New England Review was founded in 1978 at Middlebury College, growing out of the college's literary tradition and its connection to the Bread Loaf Writers' Conferences. Sydney Lea served as founding editor, and the magazine has since been shaped by editors including Stephen Donadio and, currently, Carolyn Kuebler. NER is best known for a long track record of publishing poets, fiction writers, essayists, and translators early in their careers who later become major figures in American letters, and for maintaining a serious, internationally minded editorial sensibility that includes work in translation alongside original English-language writing. In mid-2026 the magazine announced that poet Matthew Olzmann, with ties to Kundiman, Bread Loaf, Warren Wilson, and Dartmouth, had joined the staff as poetry editor.

NER is a quarterly, print-first literary magazine published out of Middlebury, Vermont, with a companion website that runs supplementary web features, audio (its "NER Out Loud" series), interviews ("Behind the Byline"), and alumni check-ins ("Where Are They Now?"). The site does not display submission fee, response-time, or reading-period specifics on its homepage, so poets should check the submissions page directly before sending work; historically NER has run open reading periods for most of the year with a brief closure in summer, and, like most journals of its stature and CLMP affiliation, it pays contributors. Prospective submitters should expect a competitive, slush-heavy queue given the magazine's visibility and long institutional history, and should look for updated guidelines reflecting the new poetry editorship before submitting.