It publishes political, social, and historical analysis, literary and cultural criticism, book reviews, fiction, and poetry, both online and in print.

A quarterly devoted to literature and the arts, the magazine was started by a group that included Juan Alonso, Richard Burgin, and Anita Silvey.

[3] During the eighties, the focus of the magazine broadened and during the nineties became more politically oriented, while maintaining a strong profile in both fiction and poetry.

Past forums have covered topics such as making foreign aid work, a strategy to disengage from Iraq, and new economic stress in the middle class.

The New Fiction Forum was created as "a space for wide-ranging dialogue about contemporary fiction, a dialogue founded on a simple premise: that despite the intense commercialism of current publishing, there are original, vital novels published every season and readers to whom such narratives are of the profoundest importance".

The publication sponsors well-regarded annual contests in fiction; past winners include Michael Dorris, Tom Paine, and Jacob M. Appel.