Blackbird

Blackbird is an online journal of literature and the arts, based in Richmond, Virginia, and published in partnership between the Department of English at Virginia Commonwealth University and New Virginia Review, Inc. It published its inaugural issue in April 2002 and quickly changed, in the words of VCU's own news service, the way people think of online literary journals. It publishes poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction and plays, together with interviews, reviews, art, and streaming audio and video, from both established and emerging writers, and its issues and archive are freely available at blackbird.vcu.edu.

For a journal founded in the early years of online literary publishing, Blackbird's record is substantial: more than two decades and, at its twenty-first anniversary, twenty-two volumes; work by Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners; a previously unpublished poem by Sylvia Plath that made international news in 2006; and a working model, built on student editors and interns, that other university journals have been measured against. VCU describes it as one of the top literary journals in the world, with readers across the globe, and as having set the standard for university online journals since its inception.

Founding in 2001–2002

The journal's roots date to 2001, when it was established as a joint partnership between the Department of English in the College of Humanities and Sciences at Virginia Commonwealth University and New Virginia Review, Inc., a Richmond-based not-for-profit literary arts organisation that had published the New Virginia Review, a print literary journal. Blackbird published its inaugural issue in April 2002.

That first issue set the journal's ambitions in plain view. VCU's anniversary account records that it featured two Pulitzer Prize winners, a future United States Poet Laureate, a future National Book Award winner and a PEN/Faulkner finalist. An online journal edited substantially by students, publishing at that level from its first issue, was a demonstration that the internet could carry literary publishing of the first rank — the sense in which Blackbird is said to have changed expectations for its medium.

Publishers and the Richmond Partnership

Blackbird's publishing structure is a genuine partnership rather than a sponsorship. Richmond Magazine's account of the journal describes it as founded in partnership between VCU's English department and New Virginia Review, the non-profit journal based originally in Tidewater and, in later accounts, in Richmond. Senior editor Mary Flinn — a founding editor of Blackbird and director of New Virginia Review — explained the model as working together rather than hierarchical and top-down, adding that the partners really cannot exist without each other.

The economics reported in that account were modest: the journal received 10,000 dollars annually from VCU, and New Virginia Review tried to match that amount through grants and donations, with most of the money going to pay honoraria to writers. Against that budget, the journal's contributor list — Pulitzer winners giving it never-published work — represents an achievement of editorial reputation rather than resources. Support in later years has also come from VCU's College of Humanities and Sciences and from Friends of Blackbird, a group of donors and alumni of the journal that funded its website redesign.

Contents: Poetry, Fiction, Plays, Art and Audio

Blackbird publishes fiction, poetry, plays, interviews, reviews and art by new and established writers and artists, and frequently includes streaming audio and video content, including readings, interviews and art lectures. VCU's accounts add essays and creative nonfiction, and describe work ranging from poems and fiction to essays with embedded illustrations that talk, and audio recordings of plays performed by professional actors — experiments in what a literary text can be online that a print journal could not have attempted.

Each fall issue has traditionally foregrounded work by and about the late poet Larry Levis, a standing feature recorded in reference summaries of the journal. The journal's stated reading arrangements in those summaries had the reading period for poetry and fiction closing between 15 April and 15 September, and unsolicited reviews, plays and artwork not considered — the ordinary machinery of a selective journal, applied to an unordinary medium.

Notable Contributors and the Plath Poem

The journal's contributor record anchors its reputation. VCU Libraries' account notes that over the years Blackbird has featured the work of Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners, including poems by Tomas Tranströmer and Philip Levine. Richmond Magazine recorded that Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Claudia Emerson, then Virginia's poet laureate, gave the publication a never-published poem, Secure the Shadow. In 2006 Blackbird made international news when it featured a previously unpublished poem by Sylvia Plath — an event that carried a Richmond online journal's name into newspapers worldwide.

These coups matter beyond publicity. A literary journal lives by the willingness of major writers to give it serious work, often work that could have appeared anywhere. That Tranströmer, Levine, Emerson and the Plath estate's material appeared in a free online journal run from a public university in Richmond is the factual basis for the standing Blackbird claims among the leading literary journals published in the United States.

Editorial Model: Students at the Centre

Blackbird's staff, as Richmond Magazine observed, is replete with undergraduate and graduate interns, in contrast to the small full-time professional staffs of famous university quarterlies. The archived masthead of a 2014 issue shows the structure in operation: individuals from the publishing partners joined with members of the Richmond and Doha, Qatar communities, in what the journal described as, to its knowledge, the only venture at VCU joining international collaborators, undergraduate students, MA and MFA students, PhD students, alumni and community volunteers with a regional non-profit. Its list of lead associate editors runs in an unbroken student succession from 2001–02 onward.

Faculty editors describe the result as a fully integrated vertical experience for students: a beautiful product contributing to literary discourse, and simultaneously a workplace in which undergraduates, graduate students and faculty collaborate. The 2025 podcast project extends the model — episodes recorded, edited and produced by graduate students in the MFA programme with interns from kinetic imaging and media scoring in the School of the Arts.

Publication Schedule and the Flights Relaunch

For most of its life Blackbird published two issues a year. Reference summaries give the posting dates as 1 May and 1 November, with additional featured content appearing during each issue's six-month run, and previous issues archived online in their entirety. Its ISSN is 1540-3068.

In January 2024 VCU announced a new website and a new publishing schedule. The site is hosted by VCU Libraries, which provided support with accessibility compliance and web troubleshooting during the redesign. Under the new schedule the journal produces four issues a year, two of them themed; the new issues, called Flights, are shorter than previous editions, with the same amount of content spread over the year. The relaunch in December 2023 had been preceded by a two-day celebration on 13 and 14 April 2023, organised by VCU Libraries and the MFA in creative writing programme, at which Blackbird alumni — past contributors and former student editors — gave readings and panels.

The Blackbird Podcast

In August 2025 the journal's team launched a podcast, the product of two years of brainstorming between a team member and faculty editor Jessica Hendry Nelson, an associate professor of creative writing. Its debut episode, released on 12 August, paid homage to the journal's legacy with an in-depth interview with founding editor Mary Flinn, and the producers describe their goal as putting the contemporary and the archival in conversation. Episodes are expected every few months before ramping up in frequency — an extension of the journal's long practice of publishing readings and interviews as audio, now in podcast form.

Blackbird and VCU

Blackbird is inseparable from its university setting. It is produced within the English department and the MFA in creative writing programme of a large public research university in Richmond, celebrated by the university's news service and libraries as a flagship of its literary life, and sustained by the triangle of department, libraries and the external New Virginia Review partnership. Faculty editors named in the 2024 relaunch — Kathy Graber and Jessica Hendry Nelson — are creative writing faculty, and the journal's history is taught back to its own community through anniversary celebrations that bring its alumni editors and contributors to campus.

Blackbird Today

Today Blackbird continues online from Richmond, Virginia, publishing four shorter Flights issues a year — two of them themed — alongside its podcast, its complete archive and its hosted home under VCU Libraries. Founded in 2001 as a joint venture and first published in April 2002, it remains what VCU calls it: an online journal of literature and the arts that set the standard for university online journals, publishing Nobel and Pulitzer laureates and first-time writers in the same free, open issues.