The Charles River Journal was founded in 2008, by a group of writers involved in the Charles River Writers workshop, and with the aid, fellowship and encouragement of writers including Keith Botsford, George Kalogeris, X.J. Kennedy, and magazines including Fulcrum, The Hub, and Clarion. We published our first issue in 2009.
CRJ is a literary miscellany. We believe earnestly in the virtue of miscellany as a mode of literary adventuring. Isaac Asimov describes the debt he felt he owed, as a reader and a writer, to the same principle, thusly: "All this incredibly miscellaneous reading, the result of lack of guidance, left its indelible mark. My interest was aroused in twenty different directions and all those interests remained." What better goal for a literary magazine than to arouse interest in myriad directions? Accordingly, we publish all sorts: poetry, fiction, and nonfiction prose, criticism, miniatures, translations, visual art, excerpts, reprints, chapbook tuck-ins, and work in other genres and formats.
Further, we are always seeking correspondents, whether near to our home-base in Boston or anywhere else in the world, who are willing to drop us a line about the state of literature in their neck of the woods. These Despatches are a signal feature of the Journal, and we look forward to them the way we do postcards from far-flung friends. (To which end: Are you involved in literary culture, and you'd like to do some reporting, on literature and literary developments, new bookstores, books and authors of note, news, readings, events, and so on? If so, we'd love to hear from you.)
CRJ is published by the Pen & Anvil Press, an imprint of the not-for-profit Boston Poetry Union.
Editors: Zachary Bos, D. Eric Parkison and Medha Singh. Marketing and Art Direction: Cat Dossett. Past Editors: Nora Delaney, Paul Rowe, Danny Simonds. Past Contributing Editors: Paul Blumer, Jenna Bos, Leah Falk, Danielle Hallock, Ruth Lepson, Jay Otsuka, Essie Martsinkovsky.
