First Issue, 1968

Confrontation, Long Island University's Award-Winning Literary Magazine, Marks 40th Anniversary With 100th Issue

John Steinbeck and Nadine Gordimer were contributors. Iris Murdoch and Joyce Carol Oates wrote for it too. So did Derek Walcott and Paul Theroux, to name but a few memorable figures who have appeared in its pages over the years.

Confrontation, the award-winning literary magazine of Long Island University, celebrates its 40th anniversary this month with the publication of its 100th issue, containing works by Arthur Miller, W.H. Auden, Alvin Toffler, Cynthia Ozick and I.B. Singer, all reprinted from some of the magazine's early issues, as well as new fiction and poetry from writers around the world.

"For this special issue our thought was to take pieces from issues in the past and build a whole issue around it," said Martin Tucker, editor of Confrontation and Long Island University professor emeritus. The magazine, which has published the work of seven Nobel Laureates, got its name from Tucker, one of the founding editors and editor-in-chief since 1970.

“It was 1968 and it seemed like that word was in the air," he said. "But the meaning is not to be oppositional or argumentative. We're more about seeing that there is more than one side to things. In each issue we strive to give at least two views on any given topic."

In his six decades in the literary arts, Tucker has been associated with some of the nation's most influential writers - from the summer he spent in the New Mexico literary circle of Frieda Lawrence, widow of D.H. Lawrence, to his 23 years on the executive board of PEN American Center, where he got to know such people as Arthur Miller, Norman Mailer, Kurt Vonnegut, Gay Talese and Bernard Malamud.

Tucker was born in Philadelphia and spent much of his youth in Brooklyn. He attended New York University and earned his master's degree at the University of Arizona. Back in New York, he earned his Ph.D. at NYU, writing his thesis on the image of Africa in the English novel. He worked as an editorial assistant, typing up scripts for Lynn Riggs, whose play "Green Grow the Lilacs" became the musical "Oklahoma." After a brief stint as a reporter for The Associated Press in West Virginia, Tucker went to work at the Brooklyn Campus of Long Island University, then joined the faculty of the University's C.W. Post Campus. He retired from teaching in 2000.

Tucker is the author or editor of 30 non-fiction books, including "Literary Exile in the 20th Century," and his work includes plays, novels, short stories and three collections of poetry. He has written essays and reviews for The New York Times Book Review, The New Republic and The Nation. He is also the director of Confrontation Press, the literary publisher of Long Island University, which began publishing books on a regular basis in 2005.

In the course of its 40-year history, Confrontation magazine has won numerous awards and has been cited in The New Yorker, Publishers Weekly and Poets & Writers. But the publication almost didn't become a literary magazine.

The University originally asked Carleton Palmer, then on the university's Board of Trustees, to start a business magazine, Tucker said. Palmer replied that "one Wall Street Journal was enough," but added that his wife, Winthrop, might be interested in funding a literary journal, since she was a poet, playwright and dance and literary critic. Winthrop took up the offer, and along with becoming Confrontation's patron, she worked on its editorial desk in its early years.

Although there are many more magazines now than there were 40 years ago, Tucker said the publishing traditions for Confrontation are still the same.

"Literary magazines are very important because they nurture the new and beginning writer," said Tucker. "If you look at the history of literature, many American and British writers began by publishing in little magazines because the doors were open to them."

For more information call 516-299-2720 or e-mail confrontation@liu.edu. Visit the magazine's Web site at www.liu.edu/confrontation

Posted: January 21, 2008