The Missouri Review

Due to reported online delays experienced by some submitters to the Editors’ Prize contest, TMR is extending its online submission deadline to Friday, October 5, 2007. We will continue to accept fiction, poetry, and essay entries to the contest through the online submission system until midnight on Friday.

[Read more →]

I discovered Martin Scott’s “Chrome Horse” (our current online “Poem of the Week”) while leafing through old Editors’ Prize issues, and found myself  reading that poem again and again.  Part of the reason I kept re-reading it (I’ll admit) is that I don’t entirely understand the mysterious ultimate tercet.  That said, I wanted to understand […]

[Read more →]

The Missouri Review has joined the community of individuals, bands, books, pets, places, etc. on MySpace.  You can view our profile at http://www.myspace.com/missourireview.
To some of our readers, this announcement may seem commonplace; others might yet be unfamiliar with social networking websites, or skeptical as to their function.  Certainly sites like MySpace serve a variety of […]

[Read more →]

As you peruse our blog these days, you might notice some new icons lurking at the bottom of the posts. We’ve added automated links for three popular social bookmarking sites: Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon. If you’ve haven’t paid much attention to the world of social bookmarking, it’s an interesting phenomenon and worth getting involved with. […]

[Read more →]

So the deadline for our first annual Audio Competition is drawing near, and, to be perfectly honest, we still need more submissions.  As with all beginnings, this one is tenuous, touch-and-go, and we need your support to make it a success.  All of us here at TMR think this competition has tremendous potential, and, for […]

[Read more →]

Time is counting down on our first ever literary audio competition. This contest is not just for experienced audio production artists; our Voice-Only Literature category is a great opportunity for writers who haven’t yet ventured into multimedia art. Making your own recording of your writing is easier than you think, and now we’ve put together […]

[Read more →]

Now that Memorial Day has come and gone, we at The Missouri Review can settle down to our summer¹s work‹reading manuscripts, of course, and continuing to get the word out about our Audio Competition. It was heartening to see comments from dberner (an audio producer and faculty member at Columbia College Chicago) about the competition:
I […]

[Read more →]

TMR has been publishing book reviews for the past fifteen years or so, and I feel safe in boasting that over that period our reviews have gotten better and better: longer, sharper, better selected and more effectively presented.  And they’re about to get better still.  (And reviewers will get paid more for writing them.)
We started […]

[Read more →]

In an earlier blog announcing our first Annual Audio Competition, I mentioned I had taken a Radio Essay course from Prof. Jeff Porter at the University of Iowa. Since then, I’ve returned to my radio roots (shallow though they be) to interview Jeff about creating audio essays and documentaries. Jeff talks about the history of […]

[Read more →]

Peruse the list of honorees here.

[Read more →]

Several years ago, I took a Radio Essay class from Prof. Jeff Porter at the University of Iowa and had a great deal of fun converting a written essay into an audio essay. Since then, the popularity of producing radio essays and documentaries has spread tremendously. Unfortunately, there aren’t many venues out there for these audio pieces. With that in mind, we decided to provide another outlet through our new Annual Audio Competition, which makes The Missouri Review (I believe) the first literary magazine to offer such a contest.

[Read more →]

Lania Knight sat down with David Sedaris to talk about writing, snail-mail, his fear of driving and more. We’ve made it available as an online feature: You can read the interview or listen to audio outtakes.

[Read more →]

Mark Wisniewski, whose story “Birdie” appeared in TMR Volume XVI, Number 1, has won the Texas Institute of
Letters Cattarulla Award for Best Short Story for 2006 for “Prisoners of War.”

[Read more →]

Several TMR authors and one about-to-be TMR author have new or recent books out. Michele Morano, whose troubling essay

[Read more →]

This month, The Missouri Review began its 30th year of publication. Read about three decades of notable discoveries and features here in an article from MIZZOU magazine.

[Read more →]

Beginning tomorrow, The Missouri Review will feature a weekly poem online. Each poem will be selected from a previous issue or submissions by new contributors. Poetry submissions to the magazine will now be considered both for the print journal and the website. Once posted, the Poem of the Week will remain on the main page for a week; it will then be stored in an archive.

[Read more →]

The latest issue, Black and White, is now on newsstands.

One winter evening many years ago, some friends and I were entertaining ourselves with a game of free association. We were to respond without hesitation to whatever word or phrase the questioner put to us. Instead of asking about the obvious things — favorite hobbies, best movies, happiest moments, etc. — my friend was being philosophical. To me he said, “Literature,” and my unthinking response was, “Black and white.”

[Read more →]

We don’t mean to brag, but we know how to pick them. Just a few days after we invited one of our favorite poets Rodney Jones to read at our annual fundraiser at Murry’s restaurant, his most recent collection, Salvation Blues, was awarded the Kingsley Tuft Poetry Prize. He will receive $100,000 from Claremont University.

[Read more →]

As the editor in charge of book reviews, Evelyn Rogers receives many and varied titles. She was kind enough to pass along to me a book on nonfiction called Telling True Stories (Plume, 2007). It’s a collection of essays developed from five years’ worth of presentations at the Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism. Since the Nieman program strives “to help editors and writers understand and deploy the power of narrative for presenting the news engagingly,” one can expect a more journalistic approach. But there’s plenty of insightful essays for creative nonfiction types of all sorts, including sections entitled, “Name Your Subgenre,” “Ethics,” “Editing” and “Building a Career in Magazines and Books.” Among the 52 contributing writers and editors, you’ll find Gay Talese, Nora Ephron, Adam Hochschild, Tom Wolfe, Tracy Kidder, Susan Orlean, Phillip Lopate and Debra Dickerson. To learn more about the Neiman Foundation at Harvard University, its conference and other offerings, click here.

Richard Sowienski

[Read more →]

The Costa Book Awards, formerly known as the Whitbread Book Awards, recognize the previous year’s best books from writers in the UK and Ireland. This year’s winner is first-time author Stef Penney. Read the announcement here.

[Read more →]

Congratulations to the winners of the 2006 Editor’s Prize Contest. It was a tough competition this year, and we’d like to thank everyone who submitted their work to our judges. Here are the finalists:
Fiction
Winner:
Jacob M. Appel, “Creve Coeur”
New York, NY
 
Finalists:
Jennine Capó Crucet, “And in the Morning, Work”
Champaign, IL
 
Erica Debeljak, “Biology”
Evanston, IL 
 
Elliott Holt, “Fem Care”
Brooklyn, NY
 
Poetry
Winner:
Jonathan […]

[Read more →]

We are pleased to welcome you to the new design for our website! We hope that the changes we’ve made will make your exploration here easier and will provide you with a new way of experiencing our content.
We are still adapting some of our older archives and material; old content will be made available as soon […]

[Read more →]

Only twelve days left to get your contest entries into the mail. Why should you submit to The Missouri Review’s Jeffery E. Smith Editors’ Prize? Because of all the things you can use $3000 for. To get you started, here are just some things that your $3000 award might by, as compiled by contest editor […]

[Read more →]

Time to submit to this years Missouri Review Editor’s Prize is running out! As you make those final edits to your contest manuscripts, here are some thoughts from Anthony Varallo, sharing your pain.
Last-Minute Changes, 1994-2004: A Celebration

[Read more →]

You can now listen to our interview with poet Derek Mong, who chats with Poetry Editor Jason Koo about classical influences and the stories behind some of his poetry. Derek Mong is the winner of The Missouri Review’s 2006 Editor’s Prize for Poetry.
You can get the MP3 file of this interview directly from us here.
Or […]

[Read more →]