Yale Literary Magazine

Yale Literary Magazine
CategoriesLiterary magazine
FrequencyBiannual
PublisherYale University
First issue1836
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Websiteyalelit.com
ISSN0196-965X

The Yale Literary Magazine, founded in 1836, is the second-oldest student literary magazine in the United States, next to The Columbia Review,[1][2] and publishes poetry, fiction, and visual art by Yale undergraduates twice per academic year. Notable alumni featured in the magazine while students include Susan Choi, Sinclair Lewis, Meghan O'Rourke, ZZ Packer, Max Ritvo, Sarah Sze, and Thornton Wilder. The magazine's editor-in-chief is currently Uma Arengo.[citation needed]

In 1936, the magazine published a centennial issue featuring several alumni authors, including Stephen Vincent Benét, William Lyon Phelps, and Gifford Pinchot.[3] In 1978, the then-bankrupt magazine was purchased by alumnus Andrei Navrozov, but it was returned to student control in 1985 after Yale University won a lawsuit and ordered Navrozov to cease using the Yale name.[4]

The magazine publishes one issue per semester, and awards the annual Francis Bergen Memorial prize to a student author.[5] The spring 2020 issue was released online to accommodate the results of the coronavirus pandemic. In recent years, the magazine has conducted and published interviews with high-profile twentieth and twenty-first-century literary figures such as Junot Diaz, who won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, Art Spiegelman, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his graphic novel memoir Maus, and Paul Muldoon, the poetry editor for The New Yorker, who won a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

  1. ^ https://columbiareviewmag.com/about-us/history/
  2. ^ Mott, Frank L. (1930). A History of American Magazines, 1741-1850. Vol. 1. Harvard University Press. p. 488. ISBN 9780674395503.
  3. ^ "YALE TO PAY HONOR TO 'LADY IN BROWN'; College's Literary Magazine Will Celebrate Its Centennial Anniversary on Feb. 22." New York Times, February 16, 1936
  4. ^ "Yale Lit Magazine Loses Name in University Suit", The Harvard Crimson, December 5, 1983
  5. ^ "Prizes by Department or Subject", Yale Office of the Secretary and Vice President for University Life, September 29, 2022