MIZZOU NEWS

Literary Magazine Turns 25

Writer’s Digest calls it “one of the most influential literary magazines in the country.” Esquire magazine declares it one of the “mighty oaks in contemporary publishing, among a handful of the highest literary publishers.” The Missouri Review, the University of Missouri-Columbia’s renowned literary magazine, now is celebrating 25 years of discovering the most talented writers of today and uncovering works by some of the greatest writers of yesterday.

“The Missouri Review provides a forum, a place to publish, for authors who may not have a place to publish,” said editor Speer Morgan, MU English professor and a past recipient of the American Book Award. “It introduces authors to careers. When we started in 1978, we decided that we were going to be not just a literary magazine, but one of the best. We wanted to be regarded as protagonists of our authors.”

The Review was one of the first to publish such well-known novelists as Daniel Woodrell (“Ride with the Devil”), Susan Vreeland (Girl in Hyacinth Blue) and Wally Lamb (She’s Come Undone) and has published notable fiction by Nobel-Prize winner Naguib Mahfouz and Pulitzer-Prize winner Robert Olin Butler. The magazine gained national headlines over the years for discovering rare or previously unpublished works by famous authors such as Mark Twain, Tennessee Williams and Charlotte Bronte.

MU English professor Speer Morgan, Missouri Review editor and past recipient of the American Book Award. Photo by Rob Hill, MU Publications and Alumni Communication

The Review featured 15 never-before-published letters from On the Road author Jack Kerouac, the dope-smoking, hard-drinking “King of the Beats.” The magazine has featured the unpublished letters by best-selling Western author Zane Grey. The magazine also published the most authentic version to date of parts of the Book of Jubilee, one of the Dead Sea Scrolls texts.

“We hope to publish the next Nobel Prize or Pulitzer or National Book Award winner (all of which we have done before) — yet it can’t be for such recognition that we go to work,” Morgan said. “We go to work because someone else out there, against all the odds, is writing something beautiful or moving or fine, and we want them to know there’s a home for it.”

As part of its 25th anniversary celebration, the Review included in its special anniversary edition, Uncovered, candid photos of 30 authors whose work the magazine has published over the years, including Butler, Scott Turrow, Vreeland and Lamb.

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Last Update: July 2, 2009