The Boston Globe ran a great feature, the cleverly titled "Journalism" by Tracy Slater, a couple of days ago, highlighting the wealth of literary journals here in New England. No surprise, that, meaning that we have so many good writing publications here. The Dial, first edited by my muse, Margaret Fuller, was one of the original American literary journals and it, of course, was published here in Boston by its famous founders (Emerson the best known among them). Why did they start it? Because the existing periodicals (New American Review, probably the first published here) wouldn't take the founders' work. Sound familiar to any writers out the there?
Literary journals spring from writers with similar stories - or from students who want to publish their work, like the founder of AGNI*, the singular talent, Askold Melynczuk, who now heads the Creative Writing department at U Mass/Boston. Askold was a young student at Antioch College in 1972 (and, no, we didn't cross paths there as I was already in Boston) when he started the magazine, which he ported with him to Boston when he moved here. Eventually, the journal became part of the writing department at Boston University (forgive me for the shoddy history, Askold and friends - I know you love me anyway), where it has remained since. Now edited by the-needs-no-modifiers Sven Birkerts, who recently took over the Bennington Writing Seminars, and "senior" edited by the very talented Bill Pierce, AGNI heads the list in the Boston Globe review of the top ten New England lit hits.
Honestly, I cannot judge. I'm biased. All these guys are friends and I've just done a review of one of the pieces in the current online edition of AGNI for Five Star Literary Stories (will post link when it's up). Meanwhile, here's why the Globe chooses AGNI as #1:
WHY IT'S FIRST: AGNI leads the top 10 both because it's great and because it begins with the letter "A." Says Elizabeth Searle, visiting writer at the University of Massachusetts in Boston and PEN/New England board member, AGNI "sets the gold standard for magazines in this part of the world, and for the literary world in general."
WHERE IT ORIGINATES: Boston University's graduate Creative Writing Program, under the editorship of Sven Birkerts.
WHOM IT PUBLISHES: Jhumpa Lahiri, Ha Jin, Seamus Heaney, Joyce Carol Oates, Derek Walcott, and other well- and lesser-known authors writing about "the important cultural questions that concern us." www.bu.edu/agni
That said, I must mention the others as friends and acquaintances are associated with most of those too, all fine, all worthy of genuflection as putting out any of these pubs is love's labor. Endless submissions, tireless reading, and concern for the feelings of the dejected rejected writers are their companions, in order of the Globe's ranking: Ploughshares, Post Road, Quick Fiction, Redivider, New England Review, Night Train (THE ONLY ELECTRONIC JOURNAL TO MAKE THE LIST - yo, Rusty), Massachusetts Review, Green Mountains Review, and Connecticut Review.
* Technically, Hindu god of fire, more poetically, perhaps, the fire in the soul. Pronounced, variously, Ag-nee; Ahn-yee; Ug-nee.
