Salt Hill is a literary journal affiliated with Syracuse University’s Creative Writing Masters of Fine Arts Program. Salt Hill emerged from Syracuse Poems (later Syracuse Poems and Stories), a campus journal that published the work of Syracuse University graduate and undergraduate creative writing students. Syracuse Poems was first published in 1964, only a year after the Graduate Creative Writing Program’s founding in the fall of 1963. Initially, the journal exclusively published the works of students in the graduate poetry cohorts who had been awarded prizes by the University for their writing, as well as other student poetry that had been selected by the program’s faculty. In 1977, the journal was renamed Syracuse Poems and Stories and began publishing the work of graduate students in the program’s fiction cohorts. In 1987, editorial control of Syracuse Poems and Stories was turned over to graduate students in the Creative Writing Program, who renamed the publication the Salt Hill Journal the following year for its 25th anniversary edition. The journal continued to serve as a publication exclusively for the work of Syracuse University students through the spring of 1993.

In 1994, the Salt Hill Journal published its first issue of submitted works from writers outside of Syracuse University, which contained poetry, short stories, translations and scholarly writing. The journal was edited and produced by a group of Creative Writing Program graduate students under the name "The Salt Hill Journal Literary Association," which was later renamed the Salt Hill Literary Association before the organizational name was dropped from the journal's masthead. Salt Hill adopted its current name for its fourth edition in 1997, and in 1998 began publishing biannually. Throughout its history, Salt Hill has also administered a number of writing competitions, including the Salt Hill Poetry Contest, the Short/Short Fiction Contest, the Hypertext Fiction Contest, the Philip Booth Poetry Prize, and the Arthur Flowers Flash Fiction Prize. Salt Hill also oversaw the Dead Lake Chapbook Contest from 2013 to 2017. A number of notable authors have been published in Salt Hill, including National Book Award winners and finalists such as Agha Shahid Ali, Lydia Davis, Ross Gay, Terrance Hayes, Patricia Smith and Jean Valentine; Pulitzer Prize winners and finalists such as Dorianne Laux, W. S. Merwin, Lucia Perillo, Mary Ruefle, Charles Simic, Bruce Smith and James Tate; United States Poet Laureates such as Robert Pinsky; and bestselling authors such as Mary Karr and Stephen King.

As of 2026, Salt Hill is edited and produced by students in Syracuse University’s Creative Writing Graduate Program with support from Syracuse University’s College of Arts and Sciences. The journal currently focuses on poetry, short fiction, creative nonfiction, and visual art. Salt Hill releases physical issues biannually and digitally publishes interviews, reviews, and selected works on its website.