After more than a year, the Midtown Literary Review has come to fruition. It’s
been a long journey for the small staff but it has been worth it. Our goal of
finding a niche in the ever increasingly crowded online literary marketplace
remained focused. And surprisingly, in a day and age when it seems like a new
journal is being launched almost every minute, our mission to provide a showplace
for the best young writers coming out of writing programs remained unfilled.
Like any new endeavor, we ran into obstacles, delays, and pressures to change direction. But in the end, our vision prevailed and we were able to find some unique voices from across the country.
The name, Midtown Literary Review was eventually chosen because of its significance to the Ball State University in Muncie Indiana, and as a way to recognize the great literary legacy of Midtown Manhattan. Muncie is the home of the Middletown: A Study in American Culture study first conducted in the 1920s by Robert and Helen Lynd. Their goals were to record the trends that comprise life in the typical small American city. Since the initial study, the project was updated by the Lynd’s in 1937 and then again during a period of 1976 to1981. A fourth study was completed in 1999 to 2000. In honor of our own local social heritage, many of the photographs in this first issue are from the Middletown studies photographic collections.
We have begun the process of creating our own literary heritage by developing
this journal. After reading hundreds of submissions, we have published those
that we feel are not only the best, but worthy of publication in any of the
existing journals. The work is worth reading, and rereading.