"So no––the story didn’t accomplish what I thought it would when I began, but it did accomplish something I couldn’t have anticipated." CHARLENE TZU HSIEN HUANG in our latest interview: themassachusettsreview.substack.com/p/interview-...

Interview with Charlene Tzu Hsien Huang

by G. Ziegel

themassachusettsreview.substack.com

”Every word [children in Gaza] learn is a tiny step toward breaking the isolation imposed by the siege.” SHAMS MAZEN RAJAB in today's #PublicAffairs post on childhood and education in Gaza: themassachusettsreview.substack.com/p/dont-let-c...

Don't Let Childhood Be Erased in Gaza

by Shams Mazen Rajab

themassachusettsreview.substack.com

"You follow a road for as long as you can, you keep your eyes open, and you remember the weird stuff off the highway... This becomes the well from which you draw—your material." MATHEW MAGRO-FRY's interview/essay: themassachusettsreview.substack.com/p/where-you-...

Where You Find It

a creative nonfiction interview by Mathew Magro-Fry

themassachusettsreview.substack.com

"One of Demas’s achievements is her balance of sympathy: while we care for the daughter undergoing trauma, she also highlights the mother’s struggle." Author @leeupton.bsky.social takes a look at @corinnedemas.bsky.social latest novel, DAUGHTERS: massreview.org/2026/07/16/y...

Yes, You Can Go Home Again, But... - The Massachusetts Review

Review of Corinne Demas’s novel Daughters (Little A, New York, 2025) Yes, you can go home again, but you might revert to the same person you were when you first decided to leave. Corinne Demas’s novel...

massreview.org

"[Reading and writing] are essential to my happiness and wellbeing and therefore must be done for their own sake without attachment to what follows." An interview with EMILY R. DANIEL from our summer issue: themassachusettsreview.substack.com/p/interview-...

Interview with Emily R. Daniel

by G. Ziegel

themassachusettsreview.substack.com

"Tis the season/For hanging outdoors under trees on/A warm, sunny day/With a brewski array" Holding on to the weekend with a new brew review from Marsha Bryant! Featuring bevs from @halfacrebeer.bsky.social , Brooklyn Brewery, and @lefthandbrewing.bsky.social: massreview.org/2026/07/13/b...

Beers for Burgers - The Massachusetts Review

His guests are still drinking, and the smoke from his meat fire rises, on this windless evening, straight up into the trees. – John Cheever, “O Youth and Beauty!” Are you filling your grill? Tis the s...

massreview.org

"I feel like my translation work influences my own writing by giving me a way to write in voices or forms that I would never have thought of for myself." Check out the conversation between #translator @kelsivanada.bsky.social and Emilio Jurado Naón on the MR blog: massreview.org/2026/07/07/c...

Conversation between Kelsi Vanada and Emilio Jurado Naón - The Massachusetts Review

This is an edited transcription of a larger recorded conversation between Kelsi Vanada and Emilio Jurado Naón, available in full below. Vanada is the translator, and Naón the author, of the novel Agus...

massreview.org

"I begin here—at the instability of the name—because it tells us something essential." Joining the celebration of America's #250thAnniversary in the only way MR knows how, by challenging it. Read Chukwunonso Nwanze's piece on counter-naming for our #PublicAffairs: massreview.org/2026/07/02/w...

What America Forgot to Sing - The Massachusetts Review

Photo credit: Chukwunonso Nwanze. On a visit to Ellis Island, New York, in 2007. At the height of European immigration, twelve million people passed through this hall with a new country’s name waiting...

massreview.org

"There was a form in front of us and translation is a bit like that: something exists." From our interview with #translator Cindy Juyoung Ok, talking about first forms, Kim Hyesoon, and the limits of English translation: massreview.org/2026/07/01/i...

Interview with Cindy Juyoung Ok - The Massachusetts Review

Describe the first time you translated from another language. Where were you? What sounds or smells or sights do you remember? Do you remember anything happening to you in that moment? In preschool I ...

massreview.org

"We stand with all those who have been victimized and been made to feel unsafe and unwelcome." Sharing a statement from the African Feminist Initiative in response to the growing wave of xenophobic and Afrophobic violence in South Africa: massreview.org/2026/06/29/a...

African Feminists Reject Xenophobic Violence in South Africa - The Massachusetts Review

In recent weeks, a wave of xenophobic and Afrophobic violence in South Africa has targeted Black and South Asian migrants in poor and working class communities, culminating in a call for them all to l...

massreview.org

Great interview with a past MR contributor, Ye Hui, alongside translator Dong Li!

Lit Hub@literaryhub.bsky.social · last mo.

Ye Hui tells Peter Mishler that "I think poetry might offer a perspective on exploring the relationship between ourselves and the world."

"Solidarity is not a distraction from local struggles, but one of how local struggles become more discernible." Richmond Wills looks at RISING FOR PALESTINE (@plutopress.bsky.social) for #MassReviews: massreview.org/2026/06/25/a...

Against the Flattening of Solidarity: On RISING FOR PALESTINE - The Massachusetts Review

A review of Rising for Palestine: Africans in Solidarity for Decolonisation and Liberation, edited by Raouf Farrah and Suraya Dadoo. Pluto Press, 2026. During a 2025 residency in Lagos, I met with som...

massreview.org

"These days, I’m paying a lot of attention to the people around me who show courage, not just in big moments, but as a matter of habit—small, regular micro-acts of bravery." Jodi Cressman on inspiration, Kansas, and pants-making. Full interview here: open.substack.com/pub/themassa...

Interview + Reading with Jodi Cressman

by G. Ziegel

open.substack.com

"The tournament arrives at a moment when North American integration itself appears increasingly fragile." Dr. Lebohang Liepollo Pheko looks at how the World Cup reveals cracks in the capitalist landscape for #PublicAffairs: massreview.org/2026/06/19/t...

The Great Enclosure: How Global Capitalism Broke the People's Game - The Massachusetts Review

Photo by ProtoplasmaKid, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons The 2026 FIFA World Cup was sold as a celebration of North American unity. Host governments promised growth, prestige and international visibilit...

massreview.org

"Camera Review," new in The Massachusetts Review. A night on a psych unit, told backward, from the needle to the ducks.

The Massachusetts Review@themassreview.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Celebrating summer before the solstice with the launch of our new issue! Vol. 67, Issue 2 is here with poems from @timothyliupoet.bsky.social and Nikelle, prose by Caroline Crew, R.C. Blenis, Emilio Jurado Naón (translated by @kelsivanada.bsky.social) and many more! Get your copy today:

MR is sad to hear of the passing of prolific local writer Jane Yolen 💔 A resident of Hatfield, Yolen had written over 450 books and was a regular in the Western Mass literary scene. She will be missed: gazettenet.com/2026/06/15/s...

'She wrote with joy': Author Jane Yolen, who wrote more than 450 books, dies at 87 - Daily Hampshire Gazette

HATFIELD — Author Jane Yolen, known for her prolific literary career, died at her home in Hatfield on Thursday, June 11, at the age of 87. At the time of her death, Yolen had published more than 450 b...

gazettenet.com

Celebrating summer before the solstice with the launch of our new issue! Vol. 67, Issue 2 is here with poems from @timothyliupoet.bsky.social and Nikelle, prose by Caroline Crew, R.C. Blenis, Emilio Jurado Naón (translated by @kelsivanada.bsky.social) and many more! Get your copy today:

Massachusetts Review Issues

Massachusetts Review Issues(Please note that certain back issues are in low-stock. Please consult the list below, and if the issue is not available, you will be notified by email.)

general-umass.nbsstore.net

Our summer issue is launching next week, so if you haven't purchased a copy of the spring issue, now's the time! (Don't worry, you can always purchase back issues from our website, but why not get one now!) general-umass.nbsstore.net/massachusett...

Massachusetts Review Issues

Massachusetts Review Issues(Please note that certain back issues are in low-stock. If the issue is not available, you will be notified by email.)

general-umass.nbsstore.net

The Massachusetts Review@themassreview.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Our spring issues is finally here! Featuring work from Stella Wong and Tyler Patton, Jess Row and Hassan Herzallah, plus translations of prose and poetry, with art from Jennifer Strings, you'll surely find the literary warmth in these late winter days: massreview.org/issue/volume...

"A teacher asks us to refill the whiteboard markers. We tell him that the remaining ink is not enough for the upcoming classes, and watch his face fall." Nadera Raied Mushtha on the lack of educational supplies in #Gaza for our #PublicAffairs: massreview.org/2026/06/12/t...

The Disappearance of Ink in Gaza - The Massachusetts Review

One day recently, I sat down to teach my little sister, Marah, who is six years old. The lesson was about colors in English. But on the pages before us, I found that despite their names all the colors...

massreview.org

"That refusal to romanticize is the strongest current throughout When We Are Kin, and it marks the book’s distance from the hopeful coalition-talk it might easily have joined." Makhai Dickerson-Pells on Kyle T. Mays' latest from @haymarketbooks.org for #MassReviews: massreview.org/2026/06/11/r...

Repair Beyond Property: On Kyle T. Mays’s When We Are Kin - The Massachusetts Review

Some people, Mays concludes, do not actually want to end white supremacy; they want a better seat at its table (5). It is a striking, almost perverse way to begin. But it is also the book’s thesis in ...

massreview.org

"Who told us/ that life blooms only once?/ Who decided/ the soul cannot begin again/ after ruin?" Patty Prewitt reminds us about light and shadow, and resilience, in a poem for #PublicAffairs: massreview.org/2026/06/05/r...

Resilience - The Massachusetts Review

The robe hangs from melike a dark green riverthat has traveledthrough iron gates,through winters of counting,through the long vocabulary of restriction. And now— see how the old cathedral lightcannot ...

massreview.org

"Where the pelicans glide overhead/And the whitecaps foam up like beer heads,/There’s a cold one for you./Try a Florida brew/By the shore with your beach blanket spread." Marsha Bryant shares some late spring brew rhymes to whet your whistle until summer: massreview.org/2026/05/27/b...

Beachside Beers - The Massachusetts Review

There will never be an endTo this droning of the surf.-Wallace Stevens, “Fabliau of Florida” Where the pelicans glide overheadAnd the whitecaps foam up like beer heads,There’s a cold one for you.Try a...

massreview.org

"A single letter may not change a system, but it can change a moment. It can offer comfort on a difficult day, provide a sense of dignity, or simply break the silence. " Patty Prewitt on writing letters to immigrant detainees for MR's #PublicAffairs series: massreview.org/2026/05/22/o...

Outreach - The Massachusetts Review

Recently, I joined a group of volunteers who write to immigrant detainees in Otay Mesa Detention Center. A quiet kind of connection that forms when I write to someone I may never meet—someone whose wo...

massreview.org

Congrats to MR Prose in Translation editor Corine Tachtiris on her election as the new board president of @littranslate.bsky.social! Read more here: literarytranslators.org/alta-welcome...

"In Gaza, everyone seems to carry their own version of the Nakba. Mine is Rafah, a city I refuse to speak about in the past tense." 78 years after the Nakba in Palestine, Hassan Herzallah shares a piece on the inheritance of grief in Rafah. themassachusettsreview.substack.com/p/rafah-my-o...

Rafah, My Own Nakba

by Hassan Herzallah

themassachusettsreview.substack.com

"I feel like I’ve always been translating from one culture to the other, one language to another." EDWARD GUNAWAN talks Bahasa Binan, the connection between gardening and translating, and his process of translating Hendri Yulius Wijaya: themassachusettsreview.substack.com/p/interview-...

Interview with Edward Gunawan (Audio + Text)

by G. Ziegel

themassachusettsreview.substack.com

Read our full call for submissions for our forthcoming issue on Documentation here: open.substack.com/pub/themassa...

Open Call: Documentation

By Staff

open.substack.com

Submissions for our Documentation issue close Friday!

The Massachusetts Review@themassreview.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Read our full call for submissions for our forthcoming issue on Documentation here: open.substack.com/pub/themassa...

"Each day in Gaza is a new battle to navigate the different cacophonies of Israel’s massacres." Ahmad Sbaih's essay on noise and listening in the ongoing genocide in Gaza: themassachusettsreview.substack.com/p/the-sounds...

The Soundscape of Genocide

by Ahmad Sbaih

themassachusettsreview.substack.com