MIDDLEBURY, Vt. ? New England Review (NER), a national quarterly publication of Middlebury College, has published its latest issue (Volume 27, Number 4), now available in the Middlebury College Book Store and through the journal’s Web site

A mix of writers, both new and established, contributed to this issue, which also includes the first full translation of an important autobiographical work by Thomas Mann, “My Times,” and an extended feature on American writer Stanley Elkin. More than a decade after Elkin’s death, contemporary authors such as Robert Coover, William Gass, John Irving and Helen Vendler - as well as past and current Middlebury faculty Stanley Bates, Robert Cohen, Kathryn Kramer, and Robert Pack - remember Elkin and his work. Elkin biographer David C. Dougherty presents two unpublished story sketches with illuminating commentary, and former Bennington College professor Richard Tristman offers an overview of Elkin’s work.

Poets in this issue include Carl Phillips, Linda Gregerson, Susan Hahn and Laura Kasischke. Among the fiction writers are Gregory Spatz, Sage Marsters, Stephen O’Connor and Arthur Schnitzler, presented here in translation. In nonfiction, Robert B. Ray guides film studies into the new century, while Marcus Klein takes a close look at Henry James’ most provocative novel, “What Maisie Knew.” Myles Weber examines the political ambiguity of Philip Roth’s fiction, and 19th-century writer Laurence Oliphant goes on a wild elephant hunt in Tibet.

New England Review, founded in 1978, has been a publication of Middlebury College for nearly 25 years. The selection of writings in each issue presents a spectrum of viewpoints and genres, including traditional and experimental fiction, translations in poetry and prose, criticism, letters from abroad, reviews in arts and literature, and rediscoveries. Works published in NER are regularly selected for such collections as the Best American series, published by Houghton Mifflin, including “Best New Poets” and “Best American Nonrequired Writing;” “New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best;” “The O. Henry Prize Stories;” and for the Pushcart Prize.

NER is edited by Middlebury College Fulton Professor of Humanities Stephen Donadio. The poetry editor is C. Dale Young and the managing editor is Carolyn Kuebler, a 1990 graduate of Middlebury College. 

For more information, contact Carolyn Kuebler in the NER offices at 802-443-5075 or ckuebler@middlebury.edu.