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Ben Sonnenberg, Jr., is a writer and editor best known for founding Grand Street, a New York literary quarterly, which he edited from 1981 until his retirement in 1989; the magazine continued for another fifteen years before it finally ceased publication in the fall of 2004. The bulk of the collection comprises correspondence between Ben Sonnenberg, Jr. and literary contributors associated with Grand Street. Some Grand Street administrative files and a small amount of personal material, including family letters and writings, are also included.

These records contain the editorial, production and correspondence files of Grand Street, a New York literary quarterly founded by Ben Sonnenberg Jr. in 1981 and published through 2004. Throughout its two decades, Grand Street prided itself on nurturing authors and presenting a smart and eclectic mix of contemporary poetry, fiction, art and journalism. The bulk of this collection consists of annotated manuscripts, proofs and correspondence related to the magazine: featured writers include Anne Carson, Arthur Coleman Danto, Jonathan Franzen, Dennis Hopper, Ted Hughes, Norman Mailer, Susan Minot, Toni Morrison, Alice Munro, Orhan Pamuk, Salman Rushide, Edward Said and David Foster Wallace. Production files related to the magazine's operation are also housed within these records and these files include contracts, press and publicity files, design ideas and materials pertaining to Grand Street's attempts to rebrand itself as an online only magazine in the 2000s.