About
For over two decades, Blackbird: an online journal of literature and the arts has been one of the web’s premiere literary magazines, earning accolades and attracting an expansive readership for its diverse range of award-winning and emerging writers. Blackbird: an online journal of literature and the arts is made possible with the work of undergraduate and graduate student interns and graduate teaching assistants from the VCU Department of English. We are also deeply grateful to community volunteers, alumni, and donors to Friends of Blackbird for their support. We remain especially indebted to our Founding Editors: Mary Flinn, M. A. Keller, and Gregory Donovan.
A New Era
In 2023, Blackbird relaunched with a reimagined design and updated website. We aspire to publish the best poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and art from established and emerging writers and to celebrate our local literary community and heritage. Blackbird is hosted and supported by VCU Libraries, with special thanks to Ashley Brewer and Jimmy Ghaphery.
Flights
Smaller issues, featuring a diverse, curated collection of work, will now come out more frequently. These are our own Blackbird ‘Flights.’
Founding Editors
Mary Flinn
Founding editor, Mary began her tenure as the director of the New Virginia Review, Inc. in 1985. She is coeditor, with George Garrett, of Elvis in Oz: New Stories and Poems from the Hollins Creative Writing Program (University of Virginia Press, 1992), and facilitated the editing of The Gazer Within (University of Michigan Press, 2001), a collection of essays by Larry Levis. Flinn served as the poetry and fiction editor of 64 and the editor of New Virginia Review. She has participated on editors’ panels, served as a literature fellowship judge for numerous arts councils, and been a review panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts and the Virginia Commission for the Arts. She was the inaugural recipient of the Theresa Pollak Award for Words from Richmond Magazine, and Style Weekly recognized her as one of their 2016 Richmond Women in the Arts.
M.A. Keller
Online and founding editor, M.A. is a technologist, web coordinator, and writing instructor for Virginia Commonwealth University’s Department of English. His poetry has appeared in New Virginia Review, Runes, the Southern Review, and most recently in The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume IX: Virginia (Texas A&M U Press, 2022). He has created historical suites in Blackbird’s Gallery, including a four-part 1918 influenza suite of researched and republished material. Keller has taught workshops in poetry and advanced writing, and courses in hypertext and new media. His work centers on issues related to electronic publishing, including materiality, multimodal writing and design, and questions regarding durability of digital archives. Recent teaching and research interests center on the transmission of error in print and digital formats, as well as lay and professional attitudes toward error.
Gregory Donovan
Founding editor, Gregory is the author of the poetry collections Torn from the Sun (Red Hen Press, 2015), longlisted for the Julie Suk Award, and Calling His Children Home (University of Missouri Press, 1993), winner of the Devins Award for Poetry. He is the coeditor (with Michele Poulos) of Prismatics: Larry Levis & Contemporary American Poetry (Diode Editions, 2020). His poetry, essays, translations, and fiction have been published in the Kenyon Review, the Southern Review, New England Review, TriQuarterly, diode, and many other journals. His work has also appeared in several anthologies, including Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets of Virginia (University of Virginia Press, 2003). Among other awards for his writing, he is the recipient of the Robert Penn Warren Award from New England Writers as well as grants from the Virginia Commission for the Arts and fellowships from the Ucross Foundation and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Donovan is a founding faculty member of Virginia Commonwealth University’s graduate creative writing program.
