The Harvard Review is a literary magazine

Literary magazine

A literary magazine is a periodical devoted to literature in a broad sense. Literary magazines usually publish short stories, poetry and essays along with literary criticism, book reviews, biographical profiles of authors, interviews and letters...

 published by the Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

 library system.

Its origins can be dated to 1986, when Stratis Haviaras, the curator of the libraries' poetry room founded a magazine called Erato to publicize poetry room authors.

The first issue included a poem by Seamus Heaney

Seamus Heaney

Seamus Heaney is an Irish poet, writer and lecturer. He lives in Dublin. Heaney has received the Nobel Prize in Literature , the Golden Wreath of Poetry , T. S. Eliot Prize and two Whitbread prizes...

 and several book reviews. Soon, the publication was rechristened the Harvard Book Review and grew substantially in size. In 1992, the Haviaras incorporated that magazine as part of the Harvard Review, a semi-annually published volume of several hundred pages.

Among the authors that have appeared in the magazine are Arthur Miller

Arthur Miller

Arthur Asher Miller was an American playwright and essayist. He was a prominent figure in American theatre, writing dramas that include plays such as All My Sons , Death of a Salesman , The Crucible , and A View from the Bridge .Miller was often in the public eye,...

, Alice Hoffman

Alice Hoffman

Alice Hoffman is an American novelist and young-adult and children's writer, best known for her 1996 novel Practical Magic, which was adapted for a 1998 film of the same name...

, Seamus Heaney

Seamus Heaney

Seamus Heaney is an Irish poet, writer and lecturer. He lives in Dublin. Heaney has received the Nobel Prize in Literature , the Golden Wreath of Poetry , T. S. Eliot Prize and two Whitbread prizes...

, Gore Vidal

Gore Vidal

Gore Vidal is an American author, playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and political activist. His third novel, The City and the Pillar , outraged mainstream critics as one of the first major American novels to feature unambiguous homosexuality...

, David Mamet

David Mamet

David Alan Mamet is an American playwright, essayist, screenwriter and film director.Best known as a playwright, Mamet won a Pulitzer Prize and received a Tony nomination for Glengarry Glen Ross . He also received a Tony nomination for Speed-the-Plow . As a screenwriter, he received Oscar...

, Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates is an American author. Oates published her first book in 1963 and has since published over fifty novels, as well as many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction...

, John Ashbery

John Ashbery

John Lawrence Ashbery is an American poet. He has published more than twenty volumes of poetry and won nearly every major American award for poetry, including a Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for his collection Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. But Ashbery's work still proves controversial...

, Jorie Graham

Jorie Graham

Jorie Graham is an American poet. The U.S. Poetry Foundation suggests "She is perhaps the most celebrated poet of the American post-war generation". She replaced poet Seamus Heaney as Boylston Professor at Harvard, becoming the first woman to be appointed to this position...

, Jim Crace

Jim Crace

James "Jim" Crace is a contemporary English writer. The winner of numerous awards, Crace also has a large popular following. He currently lives in the Moseley area of Birmingham with his wife...

, John Updike

John Updike

John Hoyer Updike was an American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic....

, and Thomas McGuane

Thomas McGuane

Thomas Francis McGuane III is an American author. His work includes ten novels, short fiction and screenplays, as well as three collections of essays devoted to his life in the outdoors.-Early life:...

.