Type Annual magazine Editor Varies Headquarters San Jose, California | Format Magazine Language English | |
Owner(s) San Jose State University | ||
Reed Magazine is a literary journal published by San Jose State University. Two semesters of the Department of English and Comparative Literature's 133 class solicit, edit, and promote the magazine for each year. It is one of the oldest literary journals based west of the Mississippi River.
The journal prints art, poetry, and prose (fiction and nonfiction). It also sponsors the Edwin Markham Poetry Prize, the John Steinbeck Award for Fiction, and the Gabriele Rico Creative Nonfiction Challenge.
History
Reed Magazine was founded in 1867 as The Acorn. The magazine has had various names over the years. It was known as The Normal Pennant in 1898 (a reference to the California State Normal School), The Quill in the 1920s and El Portal in the 1930s. The name Reed Magazine started in 1948 when the publication was known as The Reed. At that time, the magazine was put together by SJSU's literary society, Pegasus, with help from the Associated Student Body. The name of The Reed was derived from a quote by Blaise Pascal:
Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed. The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him. All our dignity consists in thought. By it we elevate ourselves, and not by space and time which we can never fill.