Founded in 1984 by Robert Nylen (publisher) and Daniel Okrent (editor),[1] it won the National Magazine Award for General Excellence in 1986 and 1987 and was a finalist for many other National Magazine Awards (in categories including reporting, personal service, and design) in its brief existence.
Purchased in 1989 from its original investors by Telemedia, a Canadian publishing company,[1] it ceased publication in September 1990 during the recession which hit the New England region.
Several New England Monthly staff members and contributors went on to achieve notable success after the magazine's demise.
These include staff writer Jonathan Harr, author of A Civil Action (1995); executive editor Joe Nocera, who currently[update] writes a weekly business column for The New York Times; Annie Proulx, the magazine's gardening columnist, who later won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for her fiction; architecture critic Michael Kimmelman, who became art critic for The New York Times; and contributor Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, author of the prize-winning Random Family (2003).
In May 2014 an unrelated magazine named New England Monthly launched in print and online in Dartmouth, Massachusetts.