[1] Epoch is staffed by faculty and graduate students from the English Department creative writing program, and edited by Michael Koch.

[1] The magazine was established in 1947[2] by Baxter Hathaway, who arrived at Cornell University the year before to start a creative writing program.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Epoch featured the first published fiction of Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo, and early stories by Philip Roth, Stanley Elkin, and Joyce Carol Oates.

[1] Some other poets and writers who have appeared in the magazine are Jacob M. Appel,[3] Annie Dillard, Rick DeMarinis,[4] Jayne Anne Phillips, Ron Hansen, Andre Dubus, Amy Hempel, Lee K. Abbott, Charles Simic, Leslie Scalapino, Harriet Doerr, Denis Johnson, Ron Hansen,[5] John L'Heureux, Jorie Graham, Micah Perks, and Rick Bass.

"[6] C. Michael Curtis, a senior editor at The Atlantic Monthly, said he considers Epoch "one of the top literary magazines in the country in terms of the consistent quality of the writing that appears there."