“Literary magazines are born to die,” Literary Hub wrote in 2018, before listing five notable American magazines that had closed. No.1 on that list was the Northwest Review, the University of Oregon’s journal, founded in 1957 and shuttered in 2011.
The digital age continues to claim literary magazines, as even journal giants like Portland-based Tin House suspend operations amid rising production costs and declining subscription rates, if only to redistribute their resources.
But if literary magazines are born to die, maybe they are also meant to be born again.
Fifteen years after its initial suspension, and three years after a 10-issue revival, the Northwest Review returns, scheduled to release its first issue since 2023 on June 1.
At the forefront of this revival is Brian Trapp, UO’s director of disability studies, program director of the Kidd Creative Writing Workshops and the NWR’s editor-in-chief and fiction editor.
“I think (the NWR) just became a lot for everyone to do. And in the model that they were doing it under, I don’t think universities love to fork over a lot of money for a print journal,” Trapp said.
Understanding the financial demand of literary mags, but also understanding their cultural contribution — particularly that of the NWR’s to the Eugene community — Trapp applied for the Williams grant, positioning the magazine’s revival as an opportunity for experiential learning.
Trapp and UO Creative Writing Director Jason Brown secured a five-year internal grant of $17,530, expediting the revival rather than necessitating the establishment of a donor base to afford a website designer and cover Submittable fees. The grant also enables the publication of the magazine online, for free.
“We want people to read the work that we’re publishing. And sometimes when you have a print journal, you can get kind of just trapped there, and no one can see it,” Trapp said.
Assisting the revival throughout an academic course that emphasizes collaboration, undergraduates learn about literary editing, publishing and digital content management. There’s an opportunity to select an area of focus — grant writing, book reviews, social media management, etcetera, with what Paris Woodward-Ganz described as “make your own internship.”
Woodward-Ganz, a fourth-year English major, first heard of the course from the creative writing department’s Instagram last fall. This 15-person seminar fulfilled his advanced creative writing course requirement in an exciting way.
“I know MFA programs usually have journals attached to them, and part of being in that MFA program is working through submissions with the journal and everything. But I’m not sure how frequently this sort of thing happens on the undergraduate level. So that’s a really cool part that I think is unique to our newspaper.”
The NWR received over 1,500 submissions. MFA students reviewed half of the submissions, and undergraduate students reviewed the other half. Undergraduates were divided into two groups: one to assess their respective halves of fiction and creative nonfiction submissions and one to assess poetry and flash fiction.
“It was like, ‘Wow, these people are, you know, sending this stuff to us; they’re trusting us with putting their work out in the world. They’re trusting that we are going to try to make a decision for what’s best for the magazine. And I just think it’s really cool that people are submitting,” Woodward-Ganz said. “I’m a poet; I’ve submitted to stuff before, and sometimes it can feel like, ‘Okay, stuff is just getting thrown into the pile. Are they ever going to read it? What do they think?’ And being on this other end has provided me a great chance to be like, ‘We are reading it! We are seeing this work.’”
Section editors reviewed each submission under their section and received pitch letters from respective student groups that advocated for select pieces, one from each genre, to be looked at particularly closely.
One pitch letter advocated for a story called “Unbound,” which will be featured in the release. Another notable piece to be featured is a comedic short story from New York Times best-selling author and UO alumnus Nathan Harris.
These works are meant for an audience.
“These journals aren’t the same without people who are reading them, without people who are enjoying the work,” Woodward-Ganz said.
The online-only format encourages easier dissemination of the publication, in addition to being more financially feasible than print editions. Trapp feels, though, that the COVID-19 pandemic made readers inclined to spend time outside their houses and offline, so producing a yearly print anthology is a consideration, as is literary readings.
The editors intend to publish two issues per year, as well as interviews and reviews exclusive to Northwest submittors year-round.
“There’s not that many literary magazines left in the Northwest. And so we really wanna — and that’s a real loss, because you don’t get the community, and a place being celebrated,” Trapp said. “And so that was also part of reviving the magazine, is being able to showcase Northwest writers and Northwest people.”
Moving forward, the experiential course will ideally become a two-term sequence.
To realize this change, as well as the aforementioned goals, the NWR needs a donor base. The awarded grant only delays funding concerns.
Money doesn’t grow on trees, but neither do lit mags like the NWR. This publication offers a creative community curated for an international human collective, by a Eugene-based human collective — the dynamic seemingly a luxury in an AI age post-COVID-19.
And all through bringing experiential learning to the humanities.
“This is such an important, important thing for the Eugene community, too. It was always in Eugene; it was always an expression of the community,” Trapp said. “A lot of people worked on it who are still around … this had a real legacy that was important to the community. So it’s really meaningful to bring it back and also to have it benefit students directly.”
