Most literary magazines focus on the craft of writing and cater to a highly select audience of writers, literary critics, and scholars of literature. In contrast, The Reader is a quarterly literary magazine aimed at the intelligent common reader, reaching out to an audience that ranges from students first encountering serious literature to professional academics and writers. Offered here in its autumn 2005 Americans issue, The Reader is a unique journal that celebrates the act of reading in all its forms and facets.

The Reader not only publishes short fiction and poetry by new and established writers but also contains many other features such as essays on language, writing, and reading; a literary quiz; a publishing industry gossip column, Our Spy in NY ; and book reviews.
Highlights of the autumn issue include an article on Rebecca Solnit by Lawrence Weschler; a piece on the emergence of the novel in the United States by Michael Schmidt; and essays on the works of Carson McCullers, Anne Bradstreet, and Toni Morrison.

The Reader offers rich, engaging reading for book lovers, combining high-quality content with a genuine commitment to the dedicated reader.