The Gettysburg Review was a quarterly literary magazine featuring short stories, poetry, essays and reviews. Work that appeared in the magazine has been reprinted in "best-of" anthologies and receives awards.
The magazine was "recognized as one of the country’s premier journals," according to a description at the Web site of the New York Public Library.[1] The 2007 U.S. News guide to the best colleges described the review as "recognized as one of the country's best literary journals."[2] According to a Web page of the English Department of the University of Wisconsin Colleges, the Gettysburg Review is considered a "major literary journal in the U.S."[3]
History
Founded in 1988,[4] the magazine was published by Gettysburg College in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. It came out in quarterly issues in January, April, July, and October.[5] The magazine published its final issue in December 2023.[6][7]
The magazine did not print material which had been published elsewhere. Along with fresh and new short stories, it was open to publishing original poetry, whether short or long, and excerpts from novels. The magazine occasionally serialized longer fictional works over more than one issue. "Essays can be on virtually any subject, so long as it is treated in a literary fashion — gracefully and in depth," according to the magazine's website.[8][9]
The Gettysburg Review was one of the most frequent sources of material for The Best American Essays, The Best American Poetry, and The Best American Short Stories series. Other anthologies that have reprinted work originally published in the magazine: The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses, The Best Creative Nonfiction, The Best American Mystery Stories, Best New American Voices, Best New Poets, New Stories from the South, and Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards. Other work has been reprinted in publications such as Harpers and the UTNE Reader.[10]
The periodical won awards including the Best New Journal award, four Best Journal Design awards from the Council of Editors of Learned Journals, and a PEN/Nora Magid Award for Excellence in Editing.[11]
In a 1994 review of the magazine, Ron Tanner wrote that the stories in the 1993 issues were widely varied in style, but "are clearly in the mainstream of contemporary American fiction — you will not find 'experimental' work in The Gettysburg Review."
He also found the stories have a common "concern for character, and an examination of the emotional and psychological distance one might travel when faced with a problem. [...] each compels the character to make a decision, to make an effort, to make a move. Consequently, things happen in these stories. Which is to say that we end in a place very different from the story's beginning. In no resolution of a Gettysburg story, however, do we find ourselves living Happily Ever After. Life is more complicated than that, these writers assert."[12]
The quarterly received about 6,000 submissions per year and did not solicit work except for occasional reviews. "[W]e work hard not to have a regular stable of writers or favored persons of any kind," said founding editor Peter Stitt. "We are most proud of publishing writers who have never before appeared in a nationally-circulated journal. But we do not actively search through the slush pile for anything but good writing."[13]
The magazine was supported financially by Gettysburg College, for the most part, although it also received grants from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and the NEA, along with some revenue from subscriptions.[13]
Final issue
On October 3, 2023, Gettysburg College president Bob Iuliano announced that The Gettysburg Review would publish its final issue in December and then cease publication permanently.[7][14] The editors of The Gettysburg Review stated that they were never involved in any discussions regarding the termination of the journal.[15]
Appearances in The Best American Mystery Stories series
^[1] Web page titled "America's Best Colleges 2007 / Gettysburg College", (given the similarity in wording, the phrase, slightly reworded, may have come from some promotional material from the college; nevertheless, the magazine's editors endorsed it by publishing it), Retrieved June 10, 2007
