The journal is published twice a year under the aegis of the Northwestern University Department of English and features fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, literary essays, reviews, a blog, and graphic art.

[2] It was reshaped in 1964 by Charles Newman as an innovative national publication aimed at a sophisticated and diverse literary readership.

Third, the journal would move from the press to the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program (part of Northwestern University's Department of English).

[7] Periodicals as varied at the Chronicle of Higher Education and The New Yorker expressed the displeasure of the literary world at the change.

Jeffrey Lependorf, executive director of the Council of Literary Magazine and Presses, said the change "doesn’t feel like the passing of the torch; it feels like the extinguishing of the flame.”[8] Another wrote that it highlighted "a harrowing trend in publishing and in academia: the replacement of experienced, paid professionals with under- (or un-) paid casual labor—whether bloggers, graduate students, or adjuncts who often receive neither benefits nor job security.