Thirty Years After its Last Issue, Bennington Review Resumes Publication
Bennington Review, a national biannual print journal housed at Bennington College, recently relaunched thirty years after its last publication. The inaugural issue features work by award-winning writers, including recipients of the Pulitzer Prize and the Whiting Writers’ Award, as well as National Endowment for the Arts and Guggenheim fellows.
The Review publishes innovative, intelligent, and moving poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and film writing by both up-and-coming writers as well as prominent authors. It also strives to publish work by under-represented groups, including writers of color and women.
Originally founded fifty years ago by alumnus Laurence J. Hyman, the son of Bennington College faculty member Stanley Edgar Hyman and Shirley Jackson, the magazine first focused on publishing work by distinguished faculty and alumni, including Bernard Malamud, Helen Frankenthaler, and Kenneth Burke. Over time, more and more of the work came from outside the college community, and the magazine increasingly received national attention. In 1978, Bennington Review was relaunched as an influential national journal. Under editors Robert Boyers and later Nicholas Delbanco, the Review became a testing ground for contemporary arts and letters, publishing work by such established figures as John Updike, Joyce Carol Oates, Annie Dillard, and John Ashbery, and also by then-emerging writers like David Remnick and Louis Menand.
It was relaunched in 2016, with poet Michael Dumanis as Editor.
“The old Bennington Review published exciting, vital, aesthetically distinctive work. We’re very proud of that legacy, and intend to build on it,” said Dumanis. “We’re hoping to create a publication that feels inclusive and wide-ranging while remaining distinctive in style and substance. We are seeking work that is at once innovative, intelligent, and moving. We like writing that is playful but also relentless, writing that is willing to takes risks in form and content in order to make lasting intellectual and emotional connections with a reader.” The inaugural issue includes work by the Pulitzer Prize winners Rae Armantrout and Tracy K. Smith, LA Times Book Award finalists David James Poissant and Rick Barot (also a winner of this year’s PEN Open Award), NAACP Image Award finalist and Anisfield-Wolf Book Award winner Jericho Brown, and Man/Booker International Prize finalist Josip Novakovich. Other prominent contributors include novelist Porochista Khakpour, memoirist David Stuart MacLean, and poets Laura Kasischke and Dorothea Lasky, as well as National Endowment for the Arts and Guggenheim fellows, authors of New York Times Notable books, Ruth Lilly/Poetry Foundation fellows, and winners of the Whiting Writers’ Award.
The Bennington Review Advisory Board is composed of Sven Birkerts (director of the Bennington College Masters in Fine Arts in writing program), Robert Boyers, Nicholas Delbanco, alumnus Bret Easton Ellis, Katy Lederer, alumnus Jonathan Lethem, Ada Limón, Cate Marvin, alumna Roxana Robinson, Roberto Tejada, and Monica Youn.
Bennington College faculty members Brooke Allen, Benjamin Anastas, Douglas Bauer, Annabel Davis-Goff, Marguerite Feitlowitz, and Mark Wunderlich are Contributing Editors.
The magazine has national distribution through Ingram, Ubiquity, and Media Solutions. Submissions guidelines, subscription information, and sample content is available on their website.