Current Volume: Volume 25 (2024)

Editor's Note

The Tortured Poets Department is the title of Taylor Swift’s next album, and the irony is not lost on me. Or for that matter on any faculty member of a college Humanities department these days. In the face of gale-force headwinds, Humanities programs around the country are dealing with shrinking enrollments and dwindling budgets. Literary journals spring up & then die. They come and go with the seasons, rarely lasting more than a couple of years. I started the Bryant Literary Review back at the turn of the millennium. The fact that it has thrived for a full quarter of a century is simply astonishing. Congratulations! ---Here’s to 25 more years!

On one particular day when I taught at Bryant, I was having a tough time starting up discussion and so said to my class “OK, I’m just going to step outside, then come back in and we’ll begin all over again fresh.” Exasperated, I closed the door behind me, only to hear it click shut and lock me out in the corridor. Is there a metaphor here? Probably not, but when my students let me back in the room, our talk was lively, because the ice was now broken—and because, given the opportunity, people really are actually, truly interested in trading stories about human situations, their stories, the Humanities.

In this 25th Anniversary Edition, you will find carefully curated work that has been culled from hundreds of submissions from around the planet. These poets (and fiction writers) may or may not feel tortured, but they are all talented. Find a comfortable chair and some good reading light. Then turn down the outside world for a while. I promise you will be glad.