Last fall, Northwestern University announced that the venerable literary magazine TriQuarterly would disappear as a print journal and be born again as a student-run, online-only publication. Much of the literary world responded with cries and lamentations. “This has been very shocking news to the community,” the executive director of the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses told the Chronicle then. “This doesn’t feel like the passing of the torch; it feels like the extinguishing of the flame.”
Was the angst well founded? In early July, readers will get a chance to judge for themselves when the first issue of TriQuarterly Online (TQO) goes live. You can get an early taste now; the site had a soft launch in April, posting book reviews and interviews with Rosellen Brown, Sterling Plumpp, and other writers. A section called “Views” features essays and book excerpts. TQO also has a entertaining new blog, kept stocked with publishing news and notes by Matt Wood, who got his M.A. from the creative-writing program in 2007.
The editors, students in Northwestern’s graduate MA/MFA program in creative writing, are working with members of the writing faculty as part of a course designed to introduce them to what it takes to produce a literary magazine. They may choose to keep working on the magazine after the course is over. The faculty directors rotate every six months or so, according to Reginald Gibbons, co-director of the writing program. The idea is to teach students “how to manage the process,” Gibbons says, “but the students are making the decisions.”
The student editors will pick the fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction they publish. (Gibbons hopes they will run excerpts of graphic novels eventually.) They ‘ll conduct interviews and write reviews. They will not be pushing their own creative work, though. Like its print predecessor, TQO wants to attract good work from beyond the university. A new online submissions site went live in December and has been “very active,” Gibbons says. “We do expect that the possibility of multimedia and the possibility of a worldwide audience is going to be atractive to those who want to send work in,” he says.
Gibbons edited the print TriQuarterly from 1981 to 1997. He does not see the move online as a tragedy. “TriQuarterly didn’t end,” he says. “It morphed.” The first issue of TQO will be number 138, picking up where the last issue of the print magazine left off.
The move online was necessary, Gibbons believes. These days “the economics of print-copy journals, which have always been difficult, are so extraordinary that without moving onto the Web, I don’t see how literary magazines can survive over the next 10 years,” he says. (That doesn’t rule out combination print-online models for magazines that can afford them.) As a digital publication, TQO will have “instant readership around the world and the ability to publish new kind of things like audio and video and a lot more art,” Gibbons says.
Here’s one consolation for those who miss the old TriQuarterly: As well as providing logistical support for TQO, Northwestern University’s library will digitize and make available the entire archive of the print magazine. Back issues of the journal are becoming hard to find, Gibbons says. Digitization will put 137 issues’ worth of material within easy reach of readers. “That means that TriQuaterly is now, thanks to the library director, saved for however long forever turns out to be,” he says.
TriQuarterly 137, the last print issue, guest edited by Edward Hirsch, came out this spring. The first full issue of TriQuarterly Online is scheduled to hit the Internet July 5. –Jennifer Howard
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