The Missouri Review

Take a look behind the scenes of a literary journal as The Missouri Review reveals what happens to a manuscript once it arrives at our offices. Thanks for the creativity and diligent work by our team of video production interns: Scott Scheese, Kate McIntrye, Lindsay Sihilling, Cody Horton, and Emily Wunderlich. Original music by Kyle [...]

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Sixteen years ago we published a remarkable coming-of-age short story by Kevin Canty, which was later included in his fiction collection A Stranger in This World. This year, that story, “Blue Boy,” will come to life on the big screen at the upcoming Tribeca Film Festival. This short film is one of only [...]

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As one of over 600 volunteers at the True/False Film Fest this past weekend, I witnessed a passionate, diverse, and creative community–from international filmmakers to downtown dwellers–come together, transforming an already eclectic Columbia into a “small-town Midwestern utopia.”
My first assignment at The Blue Note, a renovated vaudeville house–now a popular music venue–overlapped with [...]

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Eric Daniel Metzgar’s Reporter profiles New York Times reporter Nicholas Kristof’s work in the Congo. The film, screened last weekend at the True/False Film Fest, concentrated on Kristof’s relentless pursuit to find the face of the Congo. He found that face attached to the 60-pound body of a 41-year-old woman displaced by the warring lords [...]

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Blood Trail centers on the work of freelance war photographer Robert King. The film shows King’s transition from a frightened and inexperienced nobody in Bosnia to a widely published and reliable correspondent in Iraq. . . .

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So, I am writing this post as an ode to my lovely fellow poetry readers at TMR. I have never been a part of an academic group so nerdy and so much fun in my entire life.
Before joining the poetry team at TMR I had all of these worries about my ability to analyze [...]

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The time of year is upon us when some animals begin creeping into their holes for a long winter’s hibernation and our cultural mavens creep out of their lairs to deliver unto us their judgments enumerated in list form. Lest we be left out of this mass migration, we offer as one of our closing blogs of 2008 [...]

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A good anthology is like a party assembled by a master host: it brings together a diverse array of interesting people under a common roof. It is a vehicle for introducing you to people you might not otherwise meet and enabling you to draw connections you might not otherwise make. A bad anthology is like a terrible business convention: it corrals people and inflicts [...]

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What do we listen to as we write or do our creative work? When we raised this question here at The Missouri Review, we encountered (not surprisingly) a diversity of opinions on the subject. From one perspective, music is a instrusive and disruptive force, another artistic voice drowning out one’s own. To others, music serves [...]

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As election season draws to a close with the now customary fits and starts of provisional ballot counting, run-offs, etc., we thought we’d take a look at some of our favorite politicians from literature. Prince or puppet-master, tyrant or revolutionary, the figure of the politician is a canvas upon which we can project our fondest [...]

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We asked the captain what course of action he proposed to take toward a beast so large, terrifying, and unpredictable. He hesitated to answer, and then said judiciously: “I think I shall praise it.”
–Robert Hass, epigram to Praise
Some of our oldest surviving narratives are tales of monsters. Tiamat, Leviathan, Polyphemus,Grendel: monsters feature again and again in texts [...]

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Do we really care what our political candidates read? Well, as devoted readers ourselves, of course we do. And it seems the larger world does too. Some people are afraid of what the candidates read — witness the e-mail circulating that shows a photo of Barack Obama toting a copy of Fareed Zakaria’s The Post-American World. [...]

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                               Mammon led them on,
Mammon, the least erected Spirit that fell
From Heav’n, for ev’n in Heav’n his looks and thoughts
Were always downward bent, admiring more
The riches of Heav’n’s pavement, trodden gold,
Than aught divine or holy else enjoyed
In vision beatific: by him first
Men also, and by his suggestion taught,
Ransacked the center, and with impious hands
Rifled the [...]

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Popular perceptions of writing often fixate on the image of the writer at work, and these images are, at their heart, images of place. We see the writer scribbling away by candelight with a quill pen in a mouldering garret, or typing idly while sipping a latte at a hip coffeeshop, or hunched over a bestickered [...]

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Though the ongoing shift to online retailing may have radically changed the way many of us interact with bookstores economically, these emblems of literary culture still hold a powerful sentimental, social, and even aesthetic attraction for us. In this week’s list, we invite you to share your favorite bookstores or memorable bookstore experiences, whether through a [...]

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Today at the University of Missouri, the bells on the Quad and in the student union rang at 8:46 a.m, in commemoration of the victims of Sept. 11, 2001. A mass-email announced this plan to the faculty and students yesterday, but today, some of us who teach between eight and nine were a little unsure how to proceed. [...]

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Welcome to a brand new feature of our blog, our List of the Week. This week, our staff would like to share some of the books they read over the summer of 2008. We welcome our readers’ own recommendations and reactions in the comments below!
1. Joan Acocella, 28 artists and two Saints
Joan Acocella’s collection features essays about writers, dancers, and saints which were [...]

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Even though it’s only our second year sponsoring this competition, we already have more entries in hand than the same time last year. Also, our 18th Annual Editors’ Prize Competition is booming. Because both competitions have nearly the same deadline, we’ve decided to move the Audio/Video deadline back to Dec. 1, 2008. This will give [...]

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We’re pleased to announce that the second ever Missouri Review Audio & Video Competition is now open and accepting your submissions. You might notice something a little different from last year: the new video category. We’re very excited to see what you can do with this new option. We are also continuing the Narrative Essay, [...]

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[Tara Yellen is the author of the recently published novel After Hours at the Almost Home.]
My first semester of teaching, I was a graduate student in my early twenties at the University of Colorado. I’d arrived, I was certain, entirely prepared to teach.  I had articles and short stories — and an arsenal of exercises.  [...]

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We’ve now concluded our podcast presentations of the winners of our 2007 Audio Competition. You can all of the winners are listed below with links to the podcast containing their work. Congratulations again to all of our winners!
  
Narrative Essay
First place, $1,000: Judith Sloan, “Sweeping Statements” [Listen]
First runner-up: Kris Saknussemm, “Cahoots” [Listen]
Second runner-up: Richard Paul, “Fighting With My Dad” [...]

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On this Missouri Review podcast, we have for you the audio feature “Lord God Bird” produced by Dan Collison and Elizabeth Meister, which was the 3rd runner-up in the Documentary category of our 2007 audio competition.
You can listen to this podcast directly here.

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On this Missouri Review podcast, we’re happy to share “The Secret Pianos of Manhattan,” by Ken Cormier, which was the 2nd runner-up in the Documentary category our of 2007 audio competition.
Ken Cormier is editor and producer of The Lumberyard, a radio magazine of poetry, prose, and music broadcast on WHUS in Connecticut, and also available [...]

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On this Missouri Review podcast, we’re pleased to present “Shakespeare in Black and White,” by Richard Paul, which was the first runner-up in the Documentary category of our 2007 Audio Competition.Richard Paul was also a winner in the Narrative Essay category, and you can listen to that program along with other winners in our previous [...]

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 On this Missouri Review podcast, we present the first place winner in the Documentary category of our 2007 Audio Competition.
Lu Olkowski, in her documentary “Grandpa,” looks at the Zagar family and how they deal with death. A father and son have a contest to take the best photos of their dying father/grandpa. The result is [...]

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On this Missouri Review podcast, we present our final 10-minute play, “Avian Invasion.” This entry is the work of six first-time participants at the National Audio Theatre Festival’s Audio Theater Workshop, and was the second runner-up in the 10-minute play category of our 2007 Audio Competition.

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On this Missouri Review podcast, we have another ten-minute play for your listening pleasure. Today’s entry is “Old Dog, Newer Tricks,” by George Zarr, which was the first runner-up in the ten-minute play category of our 2007 audio competition.
You can listen to this podcast directly here.

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On this Missouri Review podcast, we begin our presentation of a particularly exciting category from 2007 Audio Competition, the 10-minute plays. Today we have the first place winner, Kris Saknussemm, with his play “The Memory Wound.” Kris also had a winning entry in the Narrative Essay category, which you can listen to on one of [...]

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This episode of our podcast features the remaining runner-up entries in the Voice-Only Literature: Creative Nonfiction category. The second runner-up was Randolph Jordan, with his entry “A Death in the Family,” and the third runner up was Angela Cervantes, with “A House of Women.”
You can listen to this podcast directly here.

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