It is an interdisciplinary collaboration between the School of Art + Design and the Creative Writing Program at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.

[1] Ninth Letter exists in two related but distinct forms: a biannual print magazine and a website that features new electronic content on a continuous basis.

It included fiction from Pulitzer Prize recipient Robert Olen Butler, Katherine Vaz, and an interview with Yann Martel, the author of the Man Booker Prize-winning novel Life of Pi.

[2] Notable contributors include Roxane Gay,[3] Jaquira Díaz,[4] John Sibley Williams, Ismail Kadare, Jennifer Percy, Kathy Fagan, Lynne Sharon Schwartz, Janice N. Harrington, Lisa Russ Spaar and other writers.

Roxane Gay's “To Scratch, Claw, or Grope Clumsily or Frantically," appeared in Bad Feminist after it was published in Ninth Letter.