Robert Oakes, SI '05, has assumed the role of editor of our renamed literary magazine, Harbor Islands Review*. We urge BWP Fellows to submit work to the BWP at the U/Mass Boston address.

Copies of Harbor Islands Review, The Literary Journal of the Boston Writing Project, Spring 2006 are now available and can be purchased by mailing a check for ten dollars to the Boston Writing Project, Harbor Islands Review, Graduate College of Education, University of Massachusetts Boston, 100 Morrissey Boulevard, Boston MA 02125-3393.

a message from the editor, Robert Oakes

In the summer of 2005 I enrolled in the Boston Writing Project’s Summer Institute, a month long course for teachers of writing. It was nice to be back on the bricks at UMass/Boston, my alma mater, and it was nice to be in the company of other teachers who, like me, had a bug for writing. By then I’d been at it for several years, taking fiction workshops and hammering a few short stories into decent shape. But the summer institute really got me. Got me thinking more solidly about making the commitment to writing.

Which leads us to Harbor Islands Review, a collection of stories, poems, and essays from various Writing Project folks. It’s a resurrection job— our foundation is Divergent Voices, the original BWP literary journal— and we hope to match that magazine’s sharp and varied pages. We take our name from the chain of islands that dot Massachusetts Bay and which on a clear day are partly visible from the upper floors of Healey Library. Lovells Island, pictured on the cover of this edition, has quite a history—check out the Boston Harbor Islands National Park’s description of it on the facing page.

We hope you’ll find the stories here to be as intriguing as the stories of Lovell’s..

A few of the entries were inspired by students and the classroom. Many others are family stories. A couple of selections are experimental in nature. The final piece, Sean Sullivan’s “Summer Reading,” is an essay about Ken Kesey and the power of literature. Look for similar essays about the authors that stoke our fires in forthcoming issues.

Editorial Board: John Barry, Sharyn O'Neill

The Boston Writing Project is Supported through joint funding from the National Writing Project, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the University of Massachusetts Boston, and local school systems.

*Robert Oakes, SI '05, has assumed the role of editor of our renamed literary magazine, Harbor Islands Review. We urge BWP Fellows to submit work to the BWP at the U/Mass Boston address.

a message from the editor, Robert Oakes

Editorial Board: John Barry, Sharyn O'Neill

Robert Oakes, SI '05, has assumed the role of editor of our renamed literary magazine, Harbor Islands Review*. We urge BWP Fellows to submit work to the BWP at the U/Mass Boston address.