About Us

Contemporary Literature publishes scholarly essays on contemporary writing in English, interviews with established and emerging authors, and reviews of recent critical books in the field. The journal welcomes articles on multiple genres, including poetry, the novel, drama, creative nonfiction, new media and digital literature, and graphic narrative. Contemporary Literature published the first articles on Thomas Pynchon and Susan Howe and the first interviews with Margaret Drabble and Don DeLillo; it also helped to introduce Kazuo Ishiguro, Eavan Boland, and J. M. Coetzee to American readers. As a forum for discussing issues animating the range of contemporary literary studies, Contemporary Literature features the full diversity of critical practices. The editors seek articles that frame their analysis of texts within larger literary historical, theoretical, or cultural debates.

Special Issues:

Fiction since 2000: Postmillennial Commitments, vol. 53 #4
American Poetry: 2000–2009, vol. 52 #4
Immigrant Fictions, vol. 47 #4
Contemporary Literature and the State, vol. 49 #4