City College is home to two widely respected literary magazines, unique among Creative Writing Programs nationwide, and reflecting the belief of the Program, its writers and students, and the Humanities and Arts Division at City College, that literature is central to human endeavor.
“Can we live without fable? What a dreadful impoverishment.”
–Mark J. Mirsky, Professor of English and founding editor of Fiction
FICTION
This international magazine devoted to the short story and excerpts of novels, was founded in 1972, by Mark Jay Mirsky, Professor of English at The City College of New York, together with Donald Barthelme and the Swiss novelist Max Frisch and his wife, Marianne Frisch, who continues as its European editor. Fiction has its office in the Department of English and draws on students from the MFA Program in Creative Writing for its staff of editorial readers. Almost all of the managing editors in the past thirty years have been talented graduate students at the college. Among past students who have trained on the magazine are former Director of the MFA Program, professor and novelist Linsey Abrams, the critic and professor of English at City College Michelle Wallace: novelists Ted Mooney, Walter Mosley, Ernesto Quinonez. Many writers, who are now nationally known, David Foster Wallace, Russell Banks, T. Corraghessan Boyle, were published either first, or when they were barely known, in Fiction. Visit the Fiction website and follow Fiction on Facebook.
PROMETHEAN
Edited by students, Promethean focuses on the fiction and poetry of City College students, faculty and alumni. For fifty years, it has given young and beginning writers a chance to be published alongside established writers. Such notable authors as Elaine Equi, Ernesto Quinonez and Raymond Patterson have appeared in its pages.