The literary institutions: journals and presses

1965 – present · Analecta, the university presses, the Notre Dame Review

The student journal: The region's longest literary institution is a student journal. Indiana University South Bend's literary and visual arts journal began publishing in 1965 under the name Realm; the university archives' finding aid holds Realm for 1965–1967 and the journal under its present name, Analecta, from 1972 — the journal's own account likewise dates the renaming to 1972, though its digital collection's header counts the run from 1968, a small discrepancy printed rather than resolved. The journal appeared in fall and spring until it became annual in 1978, and it has twice worn other names — Current from 1991 to 1994 and Visceral Pagoda in 1996 — before returning to Analecta. Its faculty describe it, in the university foundation's 2024 account, as in publication for over fifty years and the longest-running creative arts and literature journal in the Indiana University system; every issue stands digitized in the university's ScholarWorks. The journal's mastheads tie it to the rest of the system — its 1980 volume names among its faculty advisors Harold Zisla, the founder of the same campus's art department, the literary annual and the art program sharing a faculty generation. The writers themselves stand in Authors & Books; the journal stands here as the institution that has published this region's students, without a break in the record, for six decades.

The presses: The same campus runs two presses, joined in what the university calls its Pub Hub. Wolfson Press, named for Lester Wolfson, the campus's first chancellor from 1969 to 1987, issued its first three titles in 2009–2010 as the "On Their Shoulders" series of local history, and launched an online Wolfson Review in November 2023. 42 Miles Press publishes poetry alone, under its director David Dodd Lee, with fourteen books released by the university foundation's 2024 account and an online journal, The Glacier. A publishing minor followed in 2022, and six student journals publish on the campus yearly — the presses and the journals together forming the documented print infrastructure of the city's literary life on its public-university side.

The Notre Dame side: Across the river, the University of Notre Dame's Creative Writing Program — proposed by William O'Rourke in 1983, voted into being by the faculty in 1989 as a master's in creative writing, a working program by 1991 and approved as an MFA in 1996, by the Association of Writers & Writing Programs' thirty-three-year history of it — admits some ten writers a year and publishes the Notre Dame Review, founded in the winter of 1995 under its founding editor Valerie Sayers. The magazine's own mastheads describe it as published semiannually — a frequency its encyclopedia entry gives as quarterly, a conflict printed with the magazine's own word governing — and it administers two standing prizes, the Ernest Sandeen Prize in Poetry and the Richard Sullivan Prize in Short Fiction. The same program houses Action Books, the transnational press co-founded by Joyelle McSweeney and Johannes Göransson. The readings and visits these institutions host season by season are their programs' own records; the institutions themselves — two presses, six student journals, one sixty-year student annual and one national review — are the literary system at its documented size.

Sources:

1. Analecta, "About" and digital collection (ScholarWorks, Indiana University South Bend), and the IUSB Archives finding aid — the 1965 start as Realm, the 1972 renaming and the collection header's 1968 count, the fall-and-spring run to 1978, and the Current and Visceral Pagoda years.
2. IUSB Foundations (2024) — the journal's fifty years and its standing in the IU system, the digitization of its back run, Wolfson Press's naming and first titles, 42 Miles Press's fourteen books and director, the Pub Hub, the 2022 publishing minor and the six student journals.
3. Association of Writers & Writing Programs, history of the Notre Dame Creative Writing Program — the 1983 proposal, 1989 faculty vote, 1991 working program, 1996 MFA approval, the ten admissions a year, and Action Books' seat in the program.
4. Notre Dame Review, mastheads and program publications — the winter 1995 founding, Valerie Sayers as founding editor, the semiannual frequency stated on its own mastheads, and the Sandeen and Sullivan prizes.