The Brooklyn Quarterly is:
- a quarterly digital magazine of literature and public ideas that publishes issues affirming the power of narrative and the critical importance of public intellectuals rather than an exclusive intelligentsia;
- a blog engaging the cultural and political stories and questions that shape life in the metropole;
- a forum both for established authors as well as the next generation of great American writers, journalists, and critics;
- a haven for creative writing that actively engages current social issues and public debates, in New York City and beyond
Featuring fiction, short- and longform journalism, interviews, poetry, multimedia pieces and criticism, we aim to cultivate accessible discourse and an open community of writers, readers, and citizens. Our issues are themed and we have covered such topics as social entrepreneurship, cultures of translation, life in cities, and public health.
Brooklyn is the launching point for our endeavors for a multitude of reasons. In “Our City,” Walt Whitman referred to Brooklyn as “a mighty world in itself,” and that is just as true today as it was in 1842. Brooklyn is, to each of us, Our City — both home and workshop, a place of family memories and personal aspirations. With its proud and continuing history of openness and diversity, opportunity and invention, Brooklyn is in many ways America’s City. More recently, Brooklyn has become synonymous with efforts to reclaim the history and artisanship of a bygone America, as a nation of producers and not just consumers — efforts we aim to embrace and celebrate.
Above all, Brooklyn stands for tangible possibility, a city that welcomes and harbors the immigrant and dissident, the struggling and ambitious. Living and working here, Whitman wrote, “are people of all classes and stages of rank — from all countries on the globe — engaged in all the varieties of avocations — of every grade, every hue of ignorance and learning, morality and vice, wealth and want, fashion and coarseness, breeding and brutality, elevation and degradation, impudence and modesty.”
We are The Brooklyn Quarterly because we believe this “mighty world,” both cosmopolitan and yet uniquely American, is still being built and deserves expression worthy of its grandeur. By naming ourselves in the tradition of Whitman’s democratic vision of America, we affirm our dedication to seeking out and publishing new voices and new ideas, raised throughout the country and around the world.
The Brooklyn Quarterly has been hosting events and publishing online quarterly issues since the summer of 2013. We are a registered 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization and literary endeavor based in Brooklyn, with editors across the country in cities ranging from San Francisco to Chicago to Washington, DC. We have an exciting slate of writers, editors, contributing editors, and advisory editors on board, and we are seeking additional writers and editors, both established and emerging, to join us by contributing to our quarterly issues and our blog.
More than half the earth’s population lives in a city, and in the next thirty years another 2.5 billion people will crowd into one. The Brooklyn Quarterly blog is about life in the urban moment. Featuring long- and short-form journalism, photography, poetry, and artwork, it explores how people and their governments—separately and together, in Brooklyn and beyond—experience cities and face down their challenges.
The Brooklyn Quarterly will retain first serial rights on featured work. We welcome all sponsors and collaborators.
For more information, please contact us: contact@brooklynquarterly.org.