Blast: A Magazine of Proletarian Short Stories explained

Blast: A Magazine of Proletarian Short Stories was an American literary magazine that ran for five issues from September 1933 to November 1934.^[1] It has been credited as a forerunner "to a wave of independent radical journals that sprang up in surprising numbers in the United States in the following years".^[2] Based in New York City, it was edited by Fred and Betty Miller.^[1]

Each of the five issues of Blast included an original work by William Carlos Williams, who was a friend of the Millers.^[1] The magazine was intended by the Millers to serve as an alternative to New Masses which had, up to that point, dominated the leftist literary space in the United States.^[3]

Further reading

• The Left in the 1930s: The Modern Quarterly (1929–33, became The Modern Monthly, 1933–40); Blast: A Magazine of Proletarian Short Stories (1933–4); and The Windsor Quarterly (1933–5)

Notes and References

1. Book: Ezra Pound and 'Globe' Magazine: The Complete Correspondence . 2015 . Bloomsbury . 1472589602 . 313.
2. Rozendal . Michael . Forms of Need: William Carlos Williams in the Radical Thirties Little Journals . William Carlos Williams Review . Fall 2007 . 27 . 2 . 137 .
3. Book: Wixson . Douglas . Worker-writer in America: Jack Conroy and the Tradition of Midwestern Literary Radicalism, 1898-1990 . 1994 . University of Illinois Press . 0252067851 . 301.