A coming-of-age story
Mizzou’s literary magazine turns 30
Editor Speer Morgan and the rest of The Missouri Review staff celebrate 30 years of publishing this year. Photos by Rob Hill.
In March 2007, The Missouri Review enters its 30th year of publication. To celebrate the Review’s journey from brand-new literary magazine on campus to nationally lauded literary staple, here are a few highlights.
Literary lost and found
Over the past 30 years, The Missouri Review has made a name for itself by publishing “found texts,” previously unpublished items from past writers or history that might not otherwise be read.
Some examples:
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In 1992, the Review published portions of the Dead Sea Scrolls, unearthed early Jewish theological texts. The issue included an excerpt from the Book of Jubilees, a variant of Genesis.
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In 1994, the Review published 15 letters written by beat writer Jack Kerouac to a longtime friend. The letters spanned from 1947, 10 years before On the Road and other books made the writer famous, through 1968, when fame and alcoholism had taken their toll on him.
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Mark Twain graced the Review’s pages in 1995, when the journal published Colonel Sellers, a previously unpublished popular play.
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In 1997, the Review highlighted MU alumnus Tennessee Williams, who attended in the 1930s, by publishing the rare play Will Mr. Merriwether Return from Memphis?
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A 2000 volume explored a frustration of being a writer — the rejection letter — in the form of a series of rejections of such famed names as Sylvia Plath, Jean Rhys and John Barth.
Where they are now
What makes The Missouri Review different from some other literary journals? Editor Speer Morgan says each submission gets a fair shake and an honest, thorough reading. That means a lot of work, which is why the internships at the Review aren’t about coffee runs and filing papers; they’re about training future literary editors by letting them sift through the slush pile for the one piece out of 300 that gets published. Interns have gone on to work at magazines such as The New Yorker and big publishing houses such as John Wiley and Sons, Unbridled Books, Penguin Group, HarperCollins and Houghton Mifflin and at other literary journals.
Who knew?
Interviews with famous authors often grace the pages of The Missouri Review. One such author, Annie Proulx, quoted in 1999, shows that not even she knew what was to come of her work: “The film rights of the short story ‘Brokeback Mountain,’ the closing story in the new collection, Close Range, were optioned by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, who wrote an exceptionally fine screenplay. What happens next remains to be seen.”
The movie won three Oscars in 2006.
Before they were big
The Missouri Review also has discovered its own share of literary greats, including Mizzou’s own Bob Shacochis, BJ ’73, MS ’79. In 1980, the Review published Shacochis’ story “Hunger.” Literary agents in New York read the story, and from there, Shacochis went on to write Easy in the Islands, the 1985 winner of the National Book Award. Other success stories published early in the Review include Robert Olen Butler, Wally Lamb and Dan Woodrell.
Reprinted with permission from MIZZOU magazine, Spring 2007.