Founded in 2003, Ninth Letter is the award-winning literary arts journal edited and produced by the Creative Writing Program at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. We aim to publish exceptional literary writing and illuminate it in cutting-edge graphic design.

Work published in Ninth Letter has been selected for awards anthologies such as The Pushcart Prize, The Best American Poetry, The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, The Best American Essays, Best New Poets, Best of the Net, and New Stories from the Midwest. During a decade-plus collaboration with the UIUC School of Art + Design, the journal also received national and international awards for graphic design, and was featured in the design awards annuals of both STEP Inside Design and HOW Magazine. In 2023, Ninth Letter was a finalist for General Magazine Excellence in CLMP's Firecracker Awards.

Ninth Letter maintains a strong commitment to our role in the UIUC Creative Writing curriculum. Graduate and undergraduate students in English and Creative Writing enroll in editing and publishing courses in which they gain hands-on experience in editorial work. Students who have completed the Ninth Letter courses have gone on to career success in commercial, academic, and literary publishing, thanks in part to their experience working with Ninth Letter.

Change. Movement. Evolution. The poems, stories, and essays in Volume 22, Issue 01 of Ninth Letter are working, in unique ways, around these themes. It's curious, how themes arise as we choose work. It isn't until after all pieces have been selected that we really notice how they are in conversation. Or perhaps it isn't curious at all; rather, the natural response to writers' observant nature in this time of rapid reality shifts. From nano to macro, the writers in this issue consider the elements or results of change, and sometimes, how despite the change, things remain the same.

Feat. work from Lisa Bass, Adam Clay, Patrick Crerand, Timothy DeMay, Kathy Fagan, C. Francis Fisher, Otis Fuqua, Regan Green, Kristen Holt-Browning, Junmoke James, Kristi Maxwell, Rose McLarney, Maggie Nipps, Michael O'Ryan, Meghan E. O'Toole, Natalie Scenters-Zapico, Emily Skaja, Ellen Skirvin, Elizabeth Torres, Casey Walker, and Devon Walker-Figueroa.