The Charles River Journal was founded in 2008, by a group of writers involved in the Charles River Writers workshop, and with the aid, fellowship and encouragement of writers including Keith Botsford, George Kalogeris, X.J. Kennedy, and magazines including Fulcrum, The Hub, and Clarion. We published our first issue in 2009. CRJ is a literary miscellany. We believe earnestly in the virtue of miscellany as a mode of literary adventuring. Isaac Asimov describes the debt he felt he owed, as a reader and a writer, to the same principle, thusly: "All this incredibly miscellaneous reading, the result of lack of guidance, left its indelible mark. My interest was aroused in twenty different directions and all those interests remained." What better goal for a literary magazine than to arouse interest in myriad directions? Accordingly, we publish all sorts: poetry, fiction, and nonfiction prose, criticism, miniatures, translations, visual art, excerpts, reprints, chapbook tuck-ins, and work in other genres and formats.