Literature as a Network: Creative-Writing Scholarship in Literary Magazines

Abstract

With the increase in undergraduate and graduate programs for creative writing at institutions of higher education in North America, literary journals and magazines now serve as leading scholarly publishing outlets and research resources for creative-writing faculty and students. This study analyzes ten years of citations from nineteen leading print and digital literary journals to examine the publication frequencies of academically affiliated writers and the representative strength of such writers in various literary genres. Through the citation analysis, the study proposes that library support of scholarship for the discipline of creative writing in literary magazines can be achieved by promoting broader discovery and user access to literary magazines in library collections and revised collection development strategies to strengthen the representation of literary journals in academic library collections.