The anniversary issue looks both backward and ahead, celebrating the magazine’s
traditions and imagining their continuation. Poetry editors Ellen Doré Watson
and Deborah Gorlin chose new work from long-time contributors, some of whom
we published early in their careers, and also to reprint a poem by e.e. cummings
as a reminder of what’s lurking back there in the archives. Then they selected
(and asked a few friends of the magazine to select) first-time contributors whose
work they wanted to share with our readership.

Our fiction and non-fiction editors solicited work from past contributors, especially
those for whom MR has had a significant role in their careers. And then some work
from people new to us, both famous and unknown. Tom Dumm arranged for our
conversation with Cornel West, and edited the result. Our tireless fiction readers,
Bob Dow, Bob Erwin, Corinne Demas, Patti Horvath, Elizabeth Porto, and others,
keep fishing good stories out of the tidal slush, a perpetual search and discovery.

The Fifth Annual Anne Halley Poetry Prize Winner for 2008 is Marilyn Hacker
for her poems appearing in the "Especially Queer Issue" of the Massachusetts
Review, Volume 49, Issues 1 & 2. The Anne Halley Award Reading will occur
this year as the kick off for the 9th Annual Juniper Festival Celebrating Fifty
Years of the Massachusetts Review Friday Night, April 24, at 8:00 p.m. in the
University Gallery at the Fine Arts Center.

Marilyn Hacker is the author of twelve books of poems, including Essays on
Departure (Carcanet Press, UK, 2006) and Desesperanto (Norton, 2003). A new
collection is forthcoming in 2009. Her eight volumes of translations include Marie
Etienne’s King of a Hundred Horsemen (Farrar Strauss and Giroux, 2008), which
received the Robert Fagles Translation Prize.

The Anne Halley Poetry Prize is co-sponsored by the Massachusetts Review and the
English Department of the University of Massachusetts/Amherst. A Prize of $500 is
awarded annually for the best poem to appear in the preceding year of MR, as chosen
by two editors and a member of the English Department. The prize poet is invited to
give a spring reading in Amherst.

The 9th annual Juniper Festival, Celebrating Fifty Years of the Massachusetts Review,
will celebrate the Massachusetts Review’s half century at the forefront of contemporary
letters and the vibrant literary and publishing landscapes of which it is a part with two
days of events including readings and performances by emerging and renowned poets and
writers; addresses; roundtables; and an independent journal and book fair showcasing an
exciting range of local, regional, and national publications.

Inaugurated in 2000 as the BigSmallPressFest, each year the Festival showcases exciting
new work and investigates issues vital to the literary arts. Recently, we've explored the
work of pre-eminent poet John Ashbery, emerging authors, and the intersection of writing
and the environment.

The festival kicks off Friday April 24th with an opening reception for the journal and
press fair, an event co-sponsored by the Fine Arts Center and featured in the town
of Amherst’s 250th anniversary celebration. The Anne Halley Poetry Prize Award
reading follows, featuring the 2008 winner Marilyn Hacker, joined by emerging poets
Shira Erlichman and Amy Leach whose work will appear in MR’s special Spring/Summer
double issue.

Saturday’s events include readings and performances featuring Pulitzer Prize winning
poet Yusef Komunyakaa, Lucy Corin, lê thi diem thúy, Thomas Glave, Christian Hawkey,
and Missoula Oblongata. Eric Lorber, founding editor of RainTaxi Review of Books will
give an address and moderate an editors roundtable focused on contemporary publishing.
The fair will run throughout the festival and include representatives from dozens of new
and established journals and presses including Alice James Books, Slope Editions, Fence Books,
Tupelo Press, Small Beer Press, Conjunctions, Iowa Review, Harvard Review, and jubilat.

For a schedule of the festival's events, click here.

Throughout its 50 year history, MR has been noted for its involvement with the visual
as well as the literary arts. The cover has provided desirable exhibition space for both
established and rising painters and photographers. Covers have featured many artists
over the years, where the breadth and variety are evident: photographs by Walker
Evans, Wendy Snyder MacNeil, and Jerome Liebling; prints by Leonard Baskin, Li Hua
and Fred Becker; works on paper by Richard Yarde and Laylah Ali.

The exhibition will have original art from over thirty Massachusetts Review covers,
selected from each decade, focusing on photography and works-on-paper. Also on
display will be the covers of every issue (close to 200), all five decades, as a sort of
timeline. The Gallery will set the stage for the Juniper Festival, which this year will
celebrate MR’s big birthday. Historical ephemera, letters, broadsides, and off-prints
will be showcased at the UMass W. E. B. Du Bois Library in conjunction with
the University Gallery exhibition.

Curators of this exhibition are MR art editors, Christin Couture, Oriole Feshbach,
and MR art director, Pam Glaven. New York Times art critic, Grace Glueck, will
write an introductory essay.

Check out David Lenson's introduction to the 50th Special double issue here!

Check out Grace Glueck's introductory essay for the Art of MR exhibition in the
University Gallery here!