"Essays can be on virtually any subject, so long as it is treated in a literary fashion — gracefully and in depth," according to the magazine's website.

[10] Prominent writers who have appeared in the magazine's pages include E. L. Doctorow, Rita Dove, Joyce Carol Oates, Jeffrey Eugenides, Linda Pastan, James Tate, and Donald Hall.

[10] Writers published in the final issue of the journal include Angie Estes, Christopher Howell, Samyak Shertok, Leslie Pietrzyk, Lenya Krow, Albert Goldbarth, Alpay Ulku, Alice Friman, Margaret Gibson, Jesse Lee Kercheval, and others.

He also found the stories have a common "concern for character, and an examination of the emotional and psychological distance one might travel when faced with a problem.

"[W]e work hard not to have a regular stable of writers or favored persons of any kind," said founding editor Peter Stitt.

Other staff members who served at the Gettysburg Review were assistant editors Frank Graziano and Jeff Mock, and managing editors Emily Ruark Clark, Cara Diaconoff, Mindy Wilson, Kim Dana Kupperman, Ellen Hathaway, Jess Bryant, and Lauren Hohle.

The magazine was supported financially by Gettysburg College, for the most part, although it also received grants from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and the NEA, along with revenue from subscriptions.