Founded in 2009 and edited by students in the UMass Boston MFA program, Breakwater Review is a literary journal that takes its name from the structures that hold back the sea—a metaphor for writing that resists easy currents and challenges received perceptions of reality. The journal publishes poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and creative nonfiction alongside photography, visual art, and illustration, positioning itself at the intersection of text and image. Its editorial vision is shaped by emerging writers and artists who are themselves immersed in the rigors of graduate-level craft, giving the review a particular investment in work that is formally alert and intellectually restless. Submissions are read with an eye toward freshness and disruption: work that complicates the familiar, whether through language, structure, or subject matter. The journal does not prescribe a single aesthetic, but it consistently favors writing and art that push against the expected. For visual artists, this means images that carry conceptual weight and dialogue with the written word; for writers, it means manuscripts that demonstrate control and risk in equal measure. There is a submission fee of $3.00 USD, which supports the journal's operations as a student-run publication. While no monetary prize is currently listed, publication in Breakwater Review offers accepted contributors a place in a journal with a distinct institutional identity and a readership attuned to emerging voices. The review's affiliation with UMass Boston provides a context of academic seriousness without the insularity of a purely academic journal—it is, at its core, a space for work that seeks to unsettle and illuminate.