Fresno State’s locally grown and nationally known literary magazine, The Normal School, continues to earn national recognition alongside the most respected publications in the country.

The Normal School was celebrated in the highlights of the 2015 VIDA Count, an annual report that examines gender parity in literary publications by counting the number of women published or reviewed. In its March 30 report, VIDA singled out The Normal School for having 69 percent of its 2015 bylines by women, one of the largest increases (up from 51 percent) over the previous year’s survey.

The Normal School — one of the few small-market magazines produced out of a graduate Master of Fine Arts program, as opposed to a large corporate entity — fared far better in the VIDA Count than other major publications in its class, including the Missouri Review (52 percent of bylines by women), McSweeney’s (45 percent) and the venerable Southern Review (35 percent). It also far outpaced large, popular magazines such as Harper’s (38 percent), The Atlantic (30 percent) and The New York Times Magazine (29 percent).

Randa Jarrar, an assistant professor of English at Fresno State and the magazine’s former fiction editor, said the recognition for The Normal School means a lot, but there’s still more work to be done on gender parity in publishing. She said she is particularly proud of the selections that she and the magazine’s associate fiction editors made in the past two years.

“We have been hearing men’s voices for so long,” Jarrar said. “It’s time to hear and amplify women’s voices.”

In early March, the literary blog Bookfox ranked The Normal School in its Top 10 Literary Nonfiction Markets in the country, tied with The New York Times Magazine and the Paris Review, and ahead of Tin House, the Oxford American and the Harvard Review.

The Bookfox listings are based on recognition in the annual Best American Essays anthology, in which The Normal School claimed eight “Notable Essays and Literary Nonfiction” in the most recent edition.

And on Feb. 16, The Normal School was included on the arts and culture website Buzzfeed in the article “29 Amazing Literary Magazines You Need To Be Reading.” One Buzzfeed user said why The Normal School is great: “Quirky, cool and current. Awesome cover art.”

Founded in 2008, The Normal School is staffed by Fresno State graduate students in the Creative Writing Program and is supported by the College of Arts and Humanities. Its new Spring 2016 issue will be published this month. Visit The Normal School online for details.