We're officially one week out from #GivingTuesday2025! Please consider joining us in our mission of platforming writers whose perspectives are desperately needed in these times with a gift!

So excited to receive my contributor copies of the Fall 2025 issue of the Massachusetts Review (@themassreview.bsky.social)! It includes my story "Anna Kavan's Cats"—a love letter to British novelist Anna Kavan (and cats) and a parody of academic scholarship.

One of our fiction readers Corinne Demas has just published a new novel: DAUGHTERS. Join us at the launch party tomorrow, November 20th at 7pm, at Amherst Books (8 Main St, Amherst, MA) to celebrate!!

"I love the idea of America, as often described through my mother’s nostalgia-laden lens... Thus, all my life, I pined for that miraculous birthland of which I have no memory." Jennifer Jang on her inspiration from imagined places, for #10Questions: massreview.org/2025/11/19/1...

"Perhaps, by hemming her protagonist in so tightly, Volckmer invites the reader to experience, on some level, a taste of Vanilla Travels Ltd.’s exhausting monotony." Christopher Santantasio, on CALLS MAY BE RECORDED, for #MassReviews: massreview.org/2025/11/18/a...

We're pleased to announce we will be hosting a virtual #reading with the guest editors of our forthcoming special issue, Incarceration & Families, along with contributors and their families on Dec. 10th at 7:30 pm est! Register here: www.eventbrite.com/e/incarcerat...

"I’m hoping and trusting that, as I turn toward that prose, poems will sneak in. They are always invited." Elizabeth Bradfield for our #10Questions, out now: massreview.org/2025/11/17/1...

Join us for an evening of Palestinian music and storytelling with award-winning novelist, Sahar Mustafah, 📚and a performance by Layaali Arabic Music Ensemble 🎶. Refreshments and light snacks will be served. Free and open to the public! Date: Friday, Dec 5, 7:00pm Location: UMass, Amherst

"I don’t remember wanting to 'be.' I wanted to know." Jan Clausen for our #10Questions. Read the full interview here: massreview.org/2025/11/12/1...

Wishing a restful #VeteransDay to those who served, and those who continue to "revere the end of the greatest carnage powerful elites had ever visited upon ordinary human beings."

"I am a big believer in maintaining corners of hope and joy in difficult times. Otherwise, what’s the point of living in this beautiful and chaotic world?" Meg Favreau for our #10Questions: massreview.org/2025/11/10/1...

"That people should honor and revere the end of the greatest carnage powerful elites had ever visited upon ordinary human beings was a great idea. It still is." Ex-Marine W. D. Ehrhart writes on Armistice (and Veterans) Day: massreview.org/2025/11/07/a...

"When I was young, I didn’t know that one could “be” a writer in the sense of a career. I wrote and read because I needed to, and because it kept me alive in very difficult circumstances." Translator Margaree Little for our #10Questions : massreview.org/2025/11/05/1...

#WesternMass friends! The Massachusetts Review published Sarah Ihmoud and Devin Atallah's searing A World Without Palestinians in February 2024. Sarah Ihmoud is giving a talk at Smith College on Tuesday November 11th titled "Hunger and the Palestinian Womb"

#WesternMass friends! Come hear MR contributors Christian G. Appy, Amy Dryansky, Uzma Aslam Khan, and @htreseler.bsky.social at @MassBook's 25 year anniversary celebration. RSVP here: www.eventbrite.com/e/a-night-of...

"My kids periodically ask me if I became what I wanted to be, which always makes me laugh so hard I cry and can’t breathe." Brian Russell talks Route 66, acrostic poems, and time management as a father for our #10Questions: massreview.org/2025/10/29/1...

"This section defines REASONS AND FEELINGS itself quite brilliantly: it’s a book working to avail itself of a different style of the “guide to writing” genre to attempt to know the world differently." Jon Hoel on Sarah Mesle, for #MassReviews: massreview.org/2025/10/28/w...

Check out MemoryWorks' Writing into Silence Workshop! This five-week remote workshop is for writers, story-tellers, and truth-tellers trying to trace elusive family histories within and across the Pacific. Registration closes November 1: www.qmzhang.com/writing-into...

Author Gabriela Cabezón Cámara and translator Robin Myers discuss WE ARE GREEN AND TREMBLING @ndbooks.bsky.social , shortlisted for the 2025 National Book Award for Translated Literature. Read here:

"Our family was torn apart not only in life but even in death. Some graves are in the north, others in the south. And we do not know if the graves in the north still exist, or if they were bulldozed by the occupation." Sarah Mahmoud, from northern Gaza: massreview.org/2025/10/24/s...

"All the poets in SIGN & BREATH create entanglements in which voices can be made more fully heard, visible, animated, complicated, and thus more grieveable... the very thing that makes us addressable." Melissa Parrish, reviewing SIGN & BREATH: massreview.org/2025/10/23/p... #MassReviews

Shocked and humbled for this essay to be listed as notable in the 2025 Best American Essays. Thank you, again, @themassreview.bsky.social for publishing this piece, and for your editors on the back-and-forth to make this essay the best possible version of itself.

"All sorts of ideas and contents come up of their own accord, in the shower, kitchen, train, on my bike. Outdoors is the best, where it’s not even ‘work’ at all." Arno Bohlmeijer shares insights (and two new poems!) for our #10Questions: massreview.org/2025/10/22/1...

"As we turn from the warmth to the cool-/ness of autumnal days, from our Köl-/sches and pilsners and light/IPAs, try this flight/Of white Belgians." Marsha Bryant shares some Oktoberfest #BrewReviews on the MR blog: massreview.org/2025/10/21/b...

#Amherst friends! The brilliant Jericho Brown will be reading at Amherst College next wednesday the 29th. Be sure to mark your calendars: www.amherst.edu/news/events/...

"My stories don’t take place in our exact reality, but rather in skewed-mirror worlds. Especially so, when it comes to writing about places that I love but where I am still very much a visitor." J. Nevada, for our #10Questions: massreview.org/2025/10/20/1...

MR Contributor George Abraham (@intifadabatata.bsky.social) and Board Director Sony Coráñez Bolton will be at Amherst college Oct. 22 for a reading in the CHI Think Tank: www.amherst.edu/academiclife...

"I have to stop feigning and reach for some kind of truth, whether I succeed or not. As a way of coaxing my terrified self onto the page, I embrace inevitable failure—as long as I fail as honestly as I can." Sunnie Chae on fear as ritual for writing: massreview.org/2025/10/15/1...

"In America, students are often taught to delink writing from matters of the stomach. I believe this breeds new forms of hunger, new forms of illiteracy, and new false freedoms." Our #10Questions with S. Shreyas is out now: massreview.org/2025/10/13/1...

"I think that imagined place is the place of dreaming, the way that we write toward our precise and (im)possible utopias, another way of saying, toward a place that can hold all of us." janan alexandra for our #10Questions: massreview.org/2025/10/08/1...

Looking for a new #read? Check out works from past contributors like Marissa Davis, Andrea Bajani, Austyn Wohlers, Brooke Sahni, and more, that have come out in the last few months: massreview.org/2025/10/07/l...

Thanks again, @themassreview.bsky.social, for publishing "For the Trees", feat. an autistic main character. The debate about autism causes & prevention/cures threatens our existence. But we deserve to be loved & accepted as we are. We're human beings, unbroken. 10 Qs: massreview.org/2025/09/24/1...

"The curation of Afrikan feminism by organs of imperial states endangers freedoms across the continent that generations have fought for." Lebohang Liepollo Pheko on the positionality of Afrikan feminism and anti-colonialism in Gaza: massreview.org/2025/10/03/a...

"Work is a common theme in my writing, not just FALLOUT. I’m interested in how our jobs shape us, trap us, save us—and the weirder the job, the better." Meg Toth, author of FALLOUT (MR 66.2), writes on jobs, ghost stories, and Cleveland for #10Questions: massreview.org/2025/10/01/1...

Am I good at remembering to post on here? NO. Do I have a story I very much want you to read in the new issue of The Massachusetts Review? YES. Is that story called "Tony Robbins Is Dead"? HELL YES.

Happy October to all--but especially to those who have been waiting so patiently to submit work to MR... Our submission period is now OPEN! Read our guidelines and submit your own work today: massreview.org/new-submissi...

October officially starts tomorrow, which means we open up our submission manager! Get ready to share your prose, poetry, hybrid, and more: massreview.org/new-submissi...

"I knew I’d be writing about anomie and the bewilderment many of us experience after college when we need to find a way forward into adulthood and its enchantments and (more numerous) disenchantments." Christine Sneed gives us another great interview for #10Questions: massreview.org/2025/09/25/a...

I answered 10 questions for @themassreview.bsky.social

"Multi-disciplinarity is certainly a mainstay of the book: filmmakers and songwriters have wisdom to lend to a life of writing[...]" Jon Hoel looks at Brian Morton's use of artists and baseball in his WRITING AS A WAY OF LIFE for #MassReviews: massreview.org/2025/09/25/r...

"Media still gets so much wrong about autistic people. It dehumanizes us, turns us into devices—brilliant, eccentric, magical, supernatural, inspirational, burdensome—to further others’ stories." Kalpita Pathak for our #10Questions: massreview.org/2025/09/24/1...

"I started hiding a leather journal full of poems in a loquat tree in our backyard, but I think Peggy Sue was the only poem to make it out of my journals until college." Caroline Harper New on polka-dot hippos and magic chairs for our #10Questions: massreview.org/2025/09/23/1...

"I’m drawn to fleeting encounters that stay with characters—small, weird interactions that hang around in memory." Fiction writer Ariel Katz shares what inspired her--and where she's been inspired-- to write "Organizing Principle" for our #10Questions: massreview.org/2025/09/22/1...

Check out the latest from @thebeliever.net featuring an essay by MR's #translation editor Mona Kareem: www.thebeliever.net/the-labyrinth/

I have a new poem in The Massachusetts Review !! a piece called "Emergency" about a very creepy evening at an eye hospital in Paris. Many thanks to the very excellent @themassreview.bsky.social

"We ran back with hundreds of others, trying to find cover and escape the shooting, but so many more people remained there in the hope that the site would open." A dispatch from #Gaza with Khaled Al-Qershali on the famine and the so-called 'humanitarian' efforts: massreview.org/2025/09/19/i...

"Verses and images that travel in and reappear through time and space are instructive signs for how the novel approaches language." Kanyin Ajayi looks at the language and story of Issa Quincy's ABSENCE for #MassReviews: massreview.org/2025/09/18/a...

With work from Leila Chatti and Myronn Hardy and Yutong Li, plus translations including poems by Heeum (transl. by Jack Saebyok Jung) and art by Alex Callender, this collection pairs well with PSL's and apple-picking and political resistance: massreview.org/issue/volume...

#WesternMass Friends! Come hear a talk with professor and scholar Jina B. Kim, in conversation with executive editor Britt Rusert, next Thursday:

"Each of these poems follows one of Tate’s familiar formulae: either something extraordinary or supernatural disturbs the realm of the ordinary or vice versa. . ." Noah Hale looks at the new #JamesTate collection from Press Brake for #MassReviews: massreview.org/2025/09/09/t...