About the Fourth River The Fourth River welcomes submissions of creative writing that explore the relationship between humans and their environments, both natural and built, urban, rural or wild. We are looking for writings that are richly situated at the confluence of place, space and identity, or that reflect upon or make use of landscape and place in new ways. Nature and environmental writing that is edgy and provocative, that goes beyond traditional nature writing, and contributes to a new type of place-based writing has the best chance of finding a home in our journal. Pittsburgh is situated at the confluence of three rivers: the Monongahela, Allegheny, and Ohio. A fourth underground river, unseeable but indispensable to the city’s riverine ecosystem, is one muse for our journal. As our founding editor, Jeffrey Thomson, wrote in first issue of The Fourth River, we are inspired by the notion that “between and beneath the visible framework of the human world and the built environment, there exist deeper currents of force and meaning supporting the very structure of that world." Our second muse is Rachel Carson, Chatham’s most distinguished alum, who wrote, in “Design for Nature Writing”: “... if we are true to the spirit of John Burroughs, or of Jeffries or Hudson or Thoreau, we are not imitators of them but—as they themselves were—we are pioneers in new areas of thought and knowledge. If we are true to them, we are the creators of a new type of literature as representative of our own day as was their own.” --Sheryl St. Germain, Chatham MFA Program Director and Executive Editor, The Fourth River More about Pittsburgh’s fourth river: http://www.clpgh.org/exhibit/neighborhoods/point/point_n78.html Two New Contests Fourth River Award for Poetry and Fourth River Award For Creative Nonfiction The Fourth River is sponsoring two new contests. Click here to see contest guidelines. Contact Us If you have questions about our submission process or would like to order a copy of our journal, you can contact us at fourthriver@chatham.edu