General Information
History and Notes
Submission Guidelines
Subscriptions
EPOCH has been in continuous publication since 1947. The magazine is published by Cornell University, staffed by faculty and graduate students in the Department of English Program in Creative Writing, and edited by Michael Koch.
EPOCH appears three times a year, in September, January, and May. Each issues runs 128 to 160 pages, in a 6 x 9 format, and features four-color cover art.
EPOCH publishes fiction, poetry, essays, graphic art, and on occasion, cartoons and screenplays. We do not publish literary criticism or book reviews.
EPOCH was founded in 1947 by Baxter Hathaway, who had been brought to Cornell the year before with a mandate to establish a creative writing program at the University. The magazine began as a literary quarterly staffed by Hathaway's colleagues in the English department, and from the start the editors proved to have a shrewd eye for talent—one story from the initial volume of the magazine was reprinted in Best American Short Stories, and all of the fiction from the initial volume was cited in that anthology. In the 1950s and 1960s, EPOCH brought to light the first published fiction of Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, and Stanley Elkin, along with early stories by Philip Roth and Joyce Carol Oates.
The magazine now appears three times a year in September, January, and May. Recent work from EPOCH has been reprinted in (and cited in) all of the major annual anthologies: Best American Short Stories; Best American Poetry; Best American Essays; The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses; Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards; Editor's Choice Awards; Best of the West; New Stories from the South.
In a recent essay about EPOCH, James McConkey, one of the founding editors of the magazine, said, "EPOCH—while remaining very much alive—has earned a unique place among those journals important to American literary history. Unlike most magazines that have endured over the decades, EPOCH continues to uphold the policy expressed in its first issue—to keep its pages free of literary debate and critical theory for the sake of creative expression. The generous editorial eclecticism that still marks the magazine is a heritage from Baxter [Hathaway], for he welcomed both experiment and tradition in structure and style."
EPOCH does not publish literary criticism or book reviews. We intend to keep the magazine eclectic, an open forum for traditional and experimental work, including the long poem. We continue to make space in the magazine for new writers and for work (like the long poem) that might be considered unwieldy.
Unsolicited submissions are welcome from 15 September to 15 April. EPOCH does not consider simultaneous submissions. Manuscripts not accompanied by SASE will be discarded.
Rates: $11.00 per year U.S., $15.00 foreign.
We are located at:
251 Goldwin Smith Hall
Ithaca, NY 14853-3201
Phone: 607-255-3385
Fax: 607-255-6661