Arbutus was first launched in the year 2000 by Jeremy Voigt
and Jordan Hartt, two undergraduate creative writing students at Western
Washington University.
The first issue of Arbutus—at the time we were still publishing
in "issues," a leftover publishing concept used by print journals—went
live in the fall of 2000, and issues were published bi-annually from
2000 to 2005.
Arbutus went on hiatus in 2006 in order for the editors to, respectively,
begin raising a family and, again respectively, launch
a print magazine called Experience, and is now celebrating its seventh
year.
In the Fall of 2009 Arbutus changed its focus from publishing contemporary poetry, fiction, and nonfiction to posting reviews of contemporary poetry.