Founded in 1959 by a group of professors from Amherst, Mount Holyoke, Smith, and UMass Amherst, MR is one of the nation's leading literary magazines, distinctive in joining highest-level artistic concerns with pressing public issues. "It is amazing that so much significant writing on race and culture appears in one magazine" (The New York Times). A 200-page quarterly of fiction, poetry, essays, and the visual arts (its original template was designed by artist Leonard Baskin) by both emerging talents and Pulitzer and Nobel prizewinners, special issues have covered women's rights, civil rights, and Caribbean, Canadian, and Latin American literatures.

The Massachusetts Review, a literary magazine, promotes social justice and equality, along with great art. Committed to aesthetic excellence as well as public engagement, MR publishes literature and art that provokes debate, inspires action, and expands our understanding of the world around us.