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• 1 2024-04-01T15:04:28-04:00 "Saturday Evening Quill" 4 Poems published in "Saturday Evening Quill," an African American literary magazine based in Boston, MA plain 2025-05-20T07:31:51-04:00
  Saturday Evening Quill was published in Boston, Massachusetts between 1928 and 1930. The editor was Eugene Gordon (1891-1974), an experienced journalist and editor who had worked with the Boston Post starting in the late 1910s. Gordon had graduated from Howard University in 1917, then served in the Army during World War I. After the war, he and his wife, Edythe Gordon (born Edythe Mae Chapman) moved to Boston, where Gordon found work with the mainstream newspaper, Boston Post. 
  
  Starting in the mid-1920s, the Gordons started a literary salon for Black writers, which included established figures like George Reginald Margetson as well as much younger writers, including most notably Dorothy West and Helene Johnson, both of whom would go on to become notable figures in the Harlem Renaissance. 
  
  Saturday Evening Quill appeared with two prefatory comments for the reader, one longer "Statement to the Reader," which reads as follows: 

  The Saturday Evening Quill appears for the first time with this issue, and hopes to appear annually hereafter. It will appear annually, provided that it annually has something to publish and sufficient money with which to pay the printer. If these two essentials are lacking, then The Saturday Evening Quill will appear again as soon as the deficiency has been supplied.  Its purpose being chiefly to present original work of Saturday Evening Quill Club members to themselves, this publication is not for sale. Members are not particularly desirous of hearing praise of what is found herein, but will listen to it, as, also, they will listen to adverse criticism. Nor have the members an exalted opinion of their work. They have not published it because they think any of it "wonderful," or "remarkable," or "extraordinary," or "unusual," or even "promising." They have published it because, being human, they are possessed of the very human traits of vanity and egotism. 
  
  They have paid for their little folly, however, out of their own pockets and purses, and are indebted only to themselves. Finally (although this is not an important fact), the ages of contributors run all the way from 22 to 60-odd. You who would like to know more may amuse yourselves by fitting authors to ages between the years 60-odd and 22. -THE EDITOR.

  
  Notably, the approach taken is highly unassuming and minimizing: the magazine seems to eschew any notion of hype. More importantly, perhaps, Gordon delineates the absence of financial incentives for the magazine. He had no intention of offering it for sale, or of making a profit from its publication. 
  
  One intriguing aspect of this preface is the non-mention of race. However, he does indicate race in a second, much briefer note just below the table of contents, which runs as follows:

  THE SATURDAY EVENING QUILL CLUB is an organization of Boston writers·. Most of these men and women are unprofessionals, and all, incidentally, are Negroes, although anybody who is eligible may become a member. 

  While the race of the authors and editor is clearly indicated here, it is again deemphasized somewhat. This is in rather dramatic contrast to comparable anthologies and magazines from the time period published in New York, such as Fire!! Devoted to the Younger Negro Artists, and Ebony and Topaz, both of which aimed to announce their Black aesthetics in their titles. 
  
  Finally, it's worth noting Gordon's comment that the authors in the magazine are "unprofessionals," meaning they had no particular aspiration to use the magazine as a launching point for their careers. 
  
  Admittedly, some of the writing published in Saturday Evening Quill was in fact forgettable. We would encourage readers to take a look at the poems of Helene Johnson and Waring Cuney, the short fiction of Dorothy West, and the short fiction of Eugene Gordon himself.