Megan: Post Road

The publication I picked up last Friday is called Post Road, is still in publication now, and puts out two issues a year in the spring and winter. They have a website -- postroadmag.com -- but there is surprisingly little about the history of the publication. In the front page of the issue I have, #30 from Winter 2016, it says that it was founded in New York City in 1999 and lists the founders and original editors. It is published as a nonprofit, in conjunction with Boston College, as also listed in the front.

With some digging, I found a copy of an article in Boston College Magazine from 2009 about the acquisition of the magazine. It was originally independent with no geographical center; then it collaborated for publication with Lesley University in Cambridge and the nonprofit Literary Ventures Fund; then it came to Boston College. Its founding story in this article, I will quote:

"Post Road was begun by a group of graduates from the Bennington College Writing Seminars. According to founding co-editor Jaime Clarke, the editors looked at various “little magazines” and noticed “the same vanguard writers popping up. We wondered if we could publish a literary magazine that didn’t feature the works of prominent writers,” Clarke says. The founders realized, however, that established names lend credibility to a publication and attract readers, so they decided to include book reviews, or what they called “recommendations,” from well-known writers such as Susan Choi, David Leavitt, and Robert Pinsky."

The selections inside are diverse: there is fiction, nonfiction, poetry, theatre, visual art, recommendations, and criticism (though interestingly, the issue I have doesn't have anything for the criticism category. Guess they didn't find a good submission for that?) Issues aren't titled, and there doesn't seem, from this one I skimmed, to be a theme it is centered around. There aren't topic limitations on their submissions page on their site. "accepts unsolicited poetry, fiction, nonfiction, short plays and monologues, and visual art submissions" -- that's pretty broad. Pretty open.

The editor for the "Criticism" section is Hillary Chute, who's an English professor here at Northeastern. I took her class on graphic novels last spring and found it kind of funny to see her name where I wasn't expecting it.