The Massachusetts Review

ABOUT

Founded in 1959 at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, The Massachusetts Review has long occupied a distinctive niche among American literary quarterlies: a magazine that treats poetry, fiction, and essays as inseparable from public affairs and political history. Early contributors and editors situated the magazine within currents of civil rights and anti-war writing, and that orientation persists — recent issues have taken up themes like the politics of leisure, Jim Crow-era infrastructure, and Gaza, alongside poetry, fiction, and visual art. The magazine is run by an editorial collective rather than a single top editor; Britt Rusert has signed recent editor's notes 'for the editor,' and Nathan McClain currently serves as poetry editor. MR also administers the Anne Halley Poetry Prize, awarded annually and marked by a public reading of the winning poet's work.