"One of Demas’s achievements is her balance of sympathy: while we care for the daughter undergoing trauma, she also highlights the mother’s struggle." Author @leeupton.bsky.social takes a look at @corinnedemas.bsky.social latest novel, DAUGHTERS: massreview.org/2026/07/16/y...

"[Reading and writing] are essential to my happiness and wellbeing and therefore must be done for their own sake without attachment to what follows." An interview with EMILY R. DANIEL from our summer issue: themassachusettsreview.substack.com/p/interview-...

"Tis the season/For hanging outdoors under trees on/A warm, sunny day/With a brewski array" Holding on to the weekend with a new brew review from Marsha Bryant! Featuring bevs from @halfacrebeer.bsky.social , Brooklyn Brewery, and @lefthandbrewing.bsky.social: massreview.org/2026/07/13/b...

"I feel like my translation work influences my own writing by giving me a way to write in voices or forms that I would never have thought of for myself." Check out the conversation between #translator @kelsivanada.bsky.social and Emilio Jurado Naón on the MR blog: massreview.org/2026/07/07/c...

"I begin here—at the instability of the name—because it tells us something essential." Joining the celebration of America's #250thAnniversary in the only way MR knows how, by challenging it. Read Chukwunonso Nwanze's piece on counter-naming for our #PublicAffairs: massreview.org/2026/07/02/w...

"There was a form in front of us and translation is a bit like that: something exists." From our interview with #translator Cindy Juyoung Ok, talking about first forms, Kim Hyesoon, and the limits of English translation: massreview.org/2026/07/01/i...

"We stand with all those who have been victimized and been made to feel unsafe and unwelcome." Sharing a statement from the African Feminist Initiative in response to the growing wave of xenophobic and Afrophobic violence in South Africa: massreview.org/2026/06/29/a...

Great interview with a past MR contributor, Ye Hui, alongside translator Dong Li!

"Solidarity is not a distraction from local struggles, but one of how local struggles become more discernible." Richmond Wills looks at RISING FOR PALESTINE (@plutopress.bsky.social) for #MassReviews: massreview.org/2026/06/25/a...

"These days, I’m paying a lot of attention to the people around me who show courage, not just in big moments, but as a matter of habit—small, regular micro-acts of bravery." Jodi Cressman on inspiration, Kansas, and pants-making. Full interview here: open.substack.com/pub/themassa...

"The tournament arrives at a moment when North American integration itself appears increasingly fragile." Dr. Lebohang Liepollo Pheko looks at how the World Cup reveals cracks in the capitalist landscape for #PublicAffairs: massreview.org/2026/06/19/t...

"Camera Review," new in The Massachusetts Review. A night on a psych unit, told backward, from the needle to the ducks.

MR is sad to hear of the passing of prolific local writer Jane Yolen 💔 A resident of Hatfield, Yolen had written over 450 books and was a regular in the Western Mass literary scene. She will be missed: gazettenet.com/2026/06/15/s...

Celebrating summer before the solstice with the launch of our new issue! Vol. 67, Issue 2 is here with poems from @timothyliupoet.bsky.social and Nikelle, prose by Caroline Crew, R.C. Blenis, Emilio Jurado Naón (translated by @kelsivanada.bsky.social) and many more! Get your copy today:

Our summer issue is launching next week, so if you haven't purchased a copy of the spring issue, now's the time! (Don't worry, you can always purchase back issues from our website, but why not get one now!) general-umass.nbsstore.net/massachusett...

"A teacher asks us to refill the whiteboard markers. We tell him that the remaining ink is not enough for the upcoming classes, and watch his face fall." Nadera Raied Mushtha on the lack of educational supplies in #Gaza for our #PublicAffairs: massreview.org/2026/06/12/t...

"That refusal to romanticize is the strongest current throughout When We Are Kin, and it marks the book’s distance from the hopeful coalition-talk it might easily have joined." Makhai Dickerson-Pells on Kyle T. Mays' latest from @haymarketbooks.org for #MassReviews: massreview.org/2026/06/11/r...

"Who told us/ that life blooms only once?/ Who decided/ the soul cannot begin again/ after ruin?" Patty Prewitt reminds us about light and shadow, and resilience, in a poem for #PublicAffairs: massreview.org/2026/06/05/r...

"Where the pelicans glide overhead/And the whitecaps foam up like beer heads,/There’s a cold one for you./Try a Florida brew/By the shore with your beach blanket spread." Marsha Bryant shares some late spring brew rhymes to whet your whistle until summer: massreview.org/2026/05/27/b...

"A single letter may not change a system, but it can change a moment. It can offer comfort on a difficult day, provide a sense of dignity, or simply break the silence. " Patty Prewitt on writing letters to immigrant detainees for MR's #PublicAffairs series: massreview.org/2026/05/22/o...

Congrats to MR Prose in Translation editor Corine Tachtiris on her election as the new board president of @littranslate.bsky.social! Read more here: literarytranslators.org/alta-welcome...

"In Gaza, everyone seems to carry their own version of the Nakba. Mine is Rafah, a city I refuse to speak about in the past tense." 78 years after the Nakba in Palestine, Hassan Herzallah shares a piece on the inheritance of grief in Rafah. themassachusettsreview.substack.com/p/rafah-my-o...

"I feel like I’ve always been translating from one culture to the other, one language to another." EDWARD GUNAWAN talks Bahasa Binan, the connection between gardening and translating, and his process of translating Hendri Yulius Wijaya: themassachusettsreview.substack.com/p/interview-...

Read our full call for submissions for our forthcoming issue on Documentation here: open.substack.com/pub/themassa...

Submissions for our Documentation issue close Friday!

"Each day in Gaza is a new battle to navigate the different cacophonies of Israel’s massacres." Ahmad Sbaih's essay on noise and listening in the ongoing genocide in Gaza: themassachusettsreview.substack.com/p/the-sounds...

Tonight!! Please join us (virtually) in celebrating Caroline Harper New at 7pm EST. Hope to see you there!

Looking for a late spring read? Check out the latest drops from past contributors like @bardsbesidebars.bsky.social, @jbrookewrites.bsky.social, @amitmajmudar.bsky.social, and more: massreview.org/2026/05/05/s...

In celebration of #InternationalWorker'sDay, we thought we'd share this interview with MR's founding editor Jules Chametzky where he talked with historian Bruce Laurie back in 2003 about union activities on campus: massreview.org/wp-content/u...

"Poetry was something that found me at a time in my life when I was really, really struggling. That was almost 27 years ago. It's been a lifeboat for me ever since." CARLOS ANDRÉS GÓMEZ in our latest interview, available as text or audio: themassachusettsreview.substack.com/p/interview-...

"I often want to give literature what has been taken away from me." SHIRA ERLICHMAN in our latest interview: themassachusettsreview.substack.com/p/interview-...

Mark your calendars! Our #virtualreading to celebrate our Halley Prize winner Caroline Harper New is happening Wednesday May 6th at 7pm EST. Register for the event here: www.eventbrite.com/e/a-virtual-...

Less than two weeks to send us work before we close for the summer! massreview.org/new-submissi...

#WesternMass friends! Join UMass' Comp Lit Program and @interlinkbooks.bsky.social tomorrow for their "Lebanon in Words & Music" reading and concert. The event takes place tomorrow April 15th at 7:00 pm in the Bernie Dallas Room in Goodell Hall, UMass.

Congrats to MR contributors Demetrius "Meech" Buckley, Mahogany L. Browne, Benjamin Frandsen, Sheree L. Greer, and Bernardo Wade, and to the other amazing writers selected as 2026 Writing Freedom Fellows from @haymarketbooks.org & @mellon.org: www.haymarketbooks.org/blogs/545-me...

"Ramadan is no longer defined by the call to prayer or the gathering around iftar tables, but by displacement, scarcity, and uncertainty. Parents struggle to secure basic meals." Khaled Al-Qershali's latest article, RAMADAN IN GAZA: themassachusettsreview.substack.com/p/ramadan-in...

Read our full call for submissions for our forthcoming issue on Documentation here: open.substack.com/pub/themassa...

Congratulations to Caroline Harper New, winner of the 2026 Anne Halley Prize for her poem MY LOVE FOR GEOGRAPHY IS AN ACT OF MOURNING! open.substack.com/pub/themassa...

"To understand Gaza’s future, one must study both the past and the present. The equation today is unmistakable: Gaza is not being allowed to recover—it is being managed to remain on the edge of collapse." Jumana Maghari on Palestine's future: open.substack.com/pub/themassa...

"Far from to forgive all, in this book, to understand all is precisely to entertain the loving and revolutionary imperative of non-forgiveness." Sophie Lewis (@reproutopia.bsky.social) looks at Jordy Rosenberg's latest, NIGHT NIGHT FAWN, for #MassReviews: massreview.org/2026/03/24/n...

"One can imagine a lonely poet facing the beautiful sights of a ‘golden island’ or willow-reeds in a lush field, at once feeling free through nature, but also trapped terrestrially due to his mortal conscience." Bijaan Noormohamed on translation for our #10questions: massreview.org/2026/03/23/1...

"From this present, THE OFFICIAL HISTORY continues to offer a meditation on the ways in which authoritarianism settles into daily life before it’s named and confronted." Manuela Borzone on watching LA HISTORIA OFICIAL now, 40 years after its release: substack.com/@themassachu...

"Write about the thing you’re ashamed of; the thing you’re afraid to say aloud. That’s where you’ll find your liberation." JODI M. SAVAGE in our latest interview: open.substack.com/pub/themassa...

Our spring issues is finally here! Featuring work from Stella Wong and Tyler Patton, Jess Row and Hassan Herzallah, plus translations of prose and poetry, with art from Jennifer Strings, you'll surely find the literary warmth in these late winter days: massreview.org/issue/volume...

"In this moment of growing global authoritarianism, building international networks of solidarity is key." Dany Díaz Mejía's LESSONS FROM HONDURAS: open.substack.com/pub/themassa...

"I get so tired of living up to some imagined expectation of what makes sense for me to write. I just want to write. I’m getting there." Eric Boyd in our newest interview: open.substack.com/pub/themassa...

"The Iran war is enabled by the military, financial, and diplomatic support of Western governments for the apartheid state of Israel and its right-wing extremist government." MICHEL MOUSHABECK for our Public Affairs: themassachusettsreview.substack.com/p/bombing-ir...

Check out our Executive Editor Britt Rusert on WHMP's Talk The Talk, talking about our current issue featuring writers and families on incarceration: soundcloud.com/whmp/mass-re...

"El Guabli insists that Saharanism is an ideological deafness, a learned incapacity to hear or register the voices, stories, and intricate relationships that make up desert life, so that only fantasies of absence, danger, or utility are recognized" by IBRAHIM FAWZY open.substack.com/pub/themassa...