Red Cedar Review

Red Cedar Review (RCR) has been published by Michigan State University undergraduates since 1963; as such, it has been touted as the "longest running, continuously published undergraduate-managed" literary journal in the United States. Although that claim has proven impossible to verify, it has been around much longer than any who currently work on it, and we take seriously and honor RCR’s history as an undergraduate-driven publication. Beginning with Volume 47 (2012), the mission of the journal has been to publish exclusively the work of undergraduate writers and artists from across the nation—a major change from earlier years that included the publication of writers with international recognition including Pablo Neruda, Thomas Transtromer, and Margaret Atwood, alongside current MSU students and faculty. There is also a history of Michigan literary production in these pages; our contributors have notably included the trio of Jim Cash, Jim Daniels, and Jim Harrison, as well as Stuart Dybek and Carolyn Forche.

About the Collection

Across its fifty-four existing volumes, Red Cedar Review has been rooted in the Michigan State University campus and community; it exists in physical copies in faculty offices, the MSU Libraries, and the University Archives. Now with this digital archive, launched fall 2019, we hope to continue to grow the readership of the journal not only into the future but also toward the past. As Kelly Caldwell notes in her editor’s introduction to Volume 46 (a retrospective of the first forty-five), reading an archive presents “a unique and spectacular immersion in the history and voices of the journal that certainly could not have otherwise been experienced and almost undoubtedly, precluding the unforeseen release of some future retrospective issue, will not happen again.” Here is that possibility; in collecting the work of hundreds of undergraduate writers and editors, we present a living history of literary magazine publication in the United States—one that will continue to grow with each issue.

This archive would not have come into being without the support of the College of Arts and Letters Undergraduate Research Initiative program, the work of student interns and Red Cedar Review staff Carolyn Dudewicz, Molly Moline, Martha Spall, Alexandra Valenti, and Michael Wemmer; the assistance of Michigan State University Press; and the time and care of MSU Libraries employees including Shawn Nicholson and the MSU Libraries Digital Repository team.

-- Collection introduced by Robin Silbergleid, Director of Creative Writing, MSU Department of English

A sampling of the many items of interest found throughout Red Cedar Review:

 Volume 3, number 1 (1965 Spring)
Volume 3, number 1 (1965 Spring)
 Volume 8, number 1 (1972 April)
Volume 8, number 1 (1972 April)
 Volume 14, number 1 (1981 Spring)
Volume 14, number 1 (1981 Spring)
 Volume 16 (1984 Spring)
Volume 16 (1984 Spring)
 Volume 38 (2003)
Volume 38 (2003)
 Volume 48 (2014)
Volume 48 (2014)