Its lasting impact can be seen in the March–April 1960 issue, which included work by Albert Camus, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Bertolt Brecht and Amiri Baraka, as well as Edward Albee's first play, The Zoo Story (1958).

The image of Che Guevara that first appeared on the cover of its February 1968 issue, designed by Paul Davis and based on a photograph by Alberto Korda, became a popular symbol of resistance.

The Evergreen Review debuted pivotal works by Samuel Beckett, Jorge Luis Borges, Charles Bukowski, William S. Burroughs, Marguerite Duras, Jean Genet, Allen Ginsberg, Günter Grass, Jack Kerouac, Norman Mailer, Henry Miller, Pablo Neruda, Vladimir Nabokov, Frank O’Hara, Kenzaburō Ōe, Octavio Paz, Harold Pinter, Susan Sontag, Tom Stoppard, Michael Ernest Sweet, Derek Walcott and Malcolm X.

By the mid-1960s, many illustrations and photographs were of an erotic nature, including a serialized graphic novel, The Adventures of Phoebe Zeit-Geist by writer Michael O'Donoghue and artist Frank Springer.

[5] The online version ceased publication in 2013 and was revived in March 2017 with OR Books co-publisher John Oakes as publisher and writer and critic Dale Peck as editor-in-chief.