I enjoyed reading Eli Epstein-Deutsch ’10’s history of Swarthmore literary magazines in the April 2012 Bulletin but was disappointed when I got to his treatment of my own era, 1968–72. This time was not the “literary desert” that Epstein-Deutsch describes, and the Swarthmore Review—not even a College publication—did not appear “like a bolt from the blue in 1969.”

When I arrived in 1968, there was an official College literary magazine under the editorship of the late Michael Hattersley ’69, who became a professor, poet, and prominent writing guru at the Harvard Business School. This magazine continued to publish stories, poems, and artwork under the name of Unsungs, at least through 1972. Its student contributors included, among many others, William Ehrhart ’73, dean of Vietnam war poets; Don Mizell ’72, producer for Ray Charles, journalist, and speech writer for Stevie Wonder; Denise Dennis ’72, author and journalist whose work to preserve her family’s historic black-owned farm was described in an award-winning 2010 Bulletin article; Bill Yarrow ’73, an English professor and well-published poet, most recently of the collection Pointed Sentences; and the late Harvey Oxenhorn ’72, director of the public policy communication program at Harvard and author of well-received nonfiction books and poetry published in The Atlantic, Ploughshares, and Southern Review.

Muffy Siegel ’72
Merion Station, Pa.