Editors: Jill & Philip Gerard

Published annually in June

Chautauqua editors Jill and Philip Gerard actively solicit writing that expresses the values of Chautauqua Institution broadly construed: a sense of inquiry into questions of personal, social, political, spiritual, and aesthetic importance, regardless of genre. Chautauqua considers the work of any writer, whether or not affiliated with Chautauqua Institution, except for members of the Board of the Chautauqua Writers’ Center unless solicited for special issues.

Qualities sought include a mastery of craft, attention to vivid and accurate language, a true lyric “ear,” an original and compelling vision, and strong narrative instinct. Above all, the editors value work that is intensely personal, yet somehow implicitly comments on larger public concerns—work that answers every reader's most urgent question: Why are you telling me this?

The original Chautauqua, founded in New York state, inspired a national movement that included traveling tent shows imitating the programs presented at Chautauqua. These shows brought theater, opera, classical music, art, theological debate, and literature to the hinterlands all across America. Over the years, the literary arts
became a prominent focus, culminating in The Chautauqua Writers’ Center.

Editor-in-Chief: David Gessner

Editor: Ben George
Art Director: Emily Smith

Published biannually

Ecotone, founded in 2005, is a semiannual journal that seeks to reimagine place. Each issue brings together the literary and the scientific, the personal and the biological, the urban and the rural. An ecotone is a transition zone between two adjacent ecological communities, containing the characteristic species of each. It is therefore a place of danger or opportunity, a testing ground. We embrace and celebrate these ecotones by breaking out of the pen of the purely literary and wandering freely among the disciplines. Our goal is to publish a vibrant rather than docile literature of place. You won’t find the hushed tones and clichés of much of so-called nature writing in our pages.

Contributors have included winners of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award (in fact, issue no. 8 contains three National Book Award winners), as well as MacArthur, Guggenheim, and NEA fellows. But you’ll see that we’re just as excited to provide a home for exciting new talents.

We’re off to a good start in our first eight issues. In the last three years, Ecotone is the only magazine in the country to have had its work reprinted in Best American Essays, Best American Short Stories, Best American Poetry, Best American Science and Nature Writing, New Stories from the South, and The Pushcart Prize. Earlier this year the magazine also earned its first nomination for an Utne Independent Press Award. We urge you to read Ecotone and find out why Salman Rushdie considers it among a handful of magazines on which “the health of the American short story depends.”