The Sewanee Review

08/13/2024

The Summer 2024 issue is out today.

Read the latest from new and returning contributors: Lily Meyer, Mary Jo Salter, Urvi Kumbhat, Brandon Taylor, Jami Nakamura Lin, and more.

The online feature—Brandon Taylor’s “False Light: Moral Worldbuilding And The Virtues Of Evil”—is available to read for free on our website.

https://thesewaneereview.com/articles/false-light-moral-worldbuilding-and-virtues-evil

07/31/2024

Last day to submit!

06/25/2024

Fiction writers! Poets! Essayists!

This July, the Sewanee Review will hold its seventh annual Fiction, Poetry, and Nonfiction contest.

Lorrie Moore will judge the fiction category, Shane McCrae will judge poetry, and John Jeremiah Sullivan will judge nonfiction.

Submit a short story or creative nonfiction piece of up to 10,000 words, or a selection of one to six poems.

Winners receive $1,000 and publication in the Spring 2025 issue of the magazine. All entrants receive a one-year subscription to the Review.

05/16/2024

The Spring 2024 issue is out today.

Read new work from Buku Sarkar, Patricia Smith, Lorrie Moore, John Jeremiah Sullivan, Joy Priest, and more.

This issue also includes the first-prize entries from our sixth annual Fiction, Poetry, and Nonfiction Contest.

Curious to know what you might find in these pages? The online feature—Carrie R. Moore’s “Till It and Keep It”—is available to read for free on our website:

https://thesewaneereview.com/articles/till-it-and-keep-it

04/02/2024

Exciting news from the mountain: On Thursday, April 11th, the Sewanee Review will host an open house featuring two writers at the forefront of contemporary American letters.

Stephanie Danler, author of the bestselling novel SWEETBITTER and memoir STRAY, and Cindy Juyoung Ok, author of WARD TOWARD and 2023 winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets, will join us for a reading and conversation, with a reception to follow. Books will also be available for purchase.

This event is free and open to the public.

02/14/2024

The Winter 2024 issue is out today.

Before exploring the issue—which features Cindy Juyoung Ok, Garth Greenwell, Ryan Chapman, and more—read a preview from editor Adam Ross:

https://lnkd.in/g3HGZX7P

“Take the issue with you on your lunch break, whether it’s on a treadmill or, if you’re lucky during these short days of February, to a comfortable chair, by a tall window, flooded with sunlight.”

12/12/2023

Looking for the perfect gift for a reader in your life? Check out the Sewanee Review's collection of apparel and accessories as the gift-giving season approaches. With the discount code HOLIDAY23, you'll receive 20% off any order from our online storefront.

Want to purchase a gift subscription? The HOLIDAY23 discount code will also save you 20% on a friend or loved one's year-long subscription to the magazine.

This offer is valid until December 31st. Subscription orders will begin with the Winter 2024 issue of the Review, which arrives in early February.

10/16/2023

The Fall 2023 issue is out today!

Read the latest from new and returning contributors: Carl Phillips, Shane McCrae, Stephanie Danler, Shannon Sanders, Maria Zo***la, and more.

07/11/2023

"Living in Tennessee these past (nearly) three decades, I’ve found that July is not only the hottest month but also the one in which the summer attempts to name itself."

Before exploring the Summer 2023 issue—which features Mag Gabbert, Daryl Qilin Yam, Jess Walter, and more—read a preview from editor Adam Ross.

https://lnkd.in/g3HGZX7P

06/20/2023

A hat, a tote, a handful of tees.

The latest look in American letters, designed by Oliver Munday.

New. Since 1892.

Head to the link in our bio to browse the collection.

05/09/2023

“Over the course of its one-hundred and thirty-one years, the fact that this quarterly has uninterruptedly reflected the culture through Letters—something I tried to play down when I first took over as editor—now seems nothing short of a miracle.”

Before exploring the Spring 2023 issue—which features A.E. Stallings, Garrett Hongo, Lily Meyer, and more—read a preview from editor Adam Ross at the link in our bio.

02/14/2023

“To experience great art is an exercise in the most authentic kind of preparedness, because it can instill the solicitude, via empathy and imagination, to lay the groundwork necessary to make us more supple, to allow us to safely sway no matter how powerful the quake.”

Before exploring the Winter 2023 issue—which features Monica Youn, Randall Mann, Roger Reeves, and more—read a preview from editor Adam Ross.

https://thesewaneereview.com/articles/winter-our-contentment

10/27/2022

Ready for flannel? The Fall 2022 issue of the Sewanee Review is now online and includes a remarkable essay by longtime Sewanee Professor of English Pamela Royston Macfie about her family. Read more and subscribe here: https://thesewaneereview.com

10/24/2022

“I am regularly afflicted by an anxiety that reactionary forces, as legion as these leaves, will ultimately overwhelm everything in which we take comfort, changing the seasons themselves into something more uniform and static.”

Before exploring the Fall 2022 issue—which features Jos Charles, Lea Carpenter, Rickey Fayne, and more—read a preview from editor Adam Ross.

https://thesewaneereview.com/articles/seasonless-season

07/11/2022

“We could go on—determined, like my daughter, to continue to read and learn. We could go on—like this issue’s contributors, whose writing reflects a radical effort to make sense of it all.”

Before exploring the Summer 2022 issue—which features Katie Kitamura, Ron Rash, Rebecca Wolff, and more—read a preview from editor Adam Ross.

https://thesewaneereview.com/articles/red-white-blue

04/04/2022

“Bare branches appear at once as if they are about to bud and also shatter like glass.”

Before exploring the Spring 2022 issue, read a preview from
editor Adam Ross.

https://thesewaneereview.com/articles/what-man-has-made-man

01/04/2022

"Will we look back on these past few months, and these first weeks of the new year, as the beginning of the end, the season when the pandemic lurched toward endemic? Or does no such final wave exist? Who can say for sure?" —Adam Ross

Before settling into the new Winter 2022 issue—which features Megan Mayhew Bergman, Jane Delury, Michael Mlekoday, Christopher Spaide, Sigrid Nunez, Matthew Olzmann, and more—read a preview from editor Adam Ross.

https://thesewaneereview.com/articles/last-wave

12/10/2021

In which Elena Passarello gives Aesop a run for his money.

In this episode of the Sewanee Review Podcast, Elena Passarello and assistant editor Jennie Vite discuss Passarello’s latest collection, Animals Strike Curious Poses, a series of essays about notable animals, both historical and mythical.

In which Elena Passarello gives Aesop a run for his money.

12/03/2021

“I knew she felt the planet’s changes in her blood, but as witnessed through a landscape she’d tracked for decades.”

For this week's Conglomerate feature, Fall contributor Megan Mayhew Bergman examines a passage from “An Ode to Provincetown,” an essay by Mary Oliver.

America's oldest continuously published literary magazine.

11/12/2021

In this episode of the Sewanee Review Podcast, editor-at-large Sidik Fofana and editor Adam Ross discuss the process of finding your footing as a writer. From disillusionment with MFA culture to how self-doubt can affect one’s writing practice, Fofana and Ross uncover the inherent vulnerability found both in the writing process and in sharing your work with others.

In which editor-at-large Sidik Fofana discusses MFA culture, slow writing, and teaching high school, as well as his stories “The Okiedoke” and “The Rent Manual,” which were originally published in the Sewanee Review.

10/22/2021

This week on the Sewanee Review Podcast, Danielle Evans sits down with editor Adam Ross to discuss characterological framework, the coincidence of unintentional motif, and the underpinnings of a successful short story.

In which Danielle Evans discusses characterological framework, the coincidence of unintentional motif, and the underpinnings of a successful short story.

10/01/2021

“And yet, what’s more heartbreaking is when another woman listens with empathy and compassion and then offers up her own similar story—in some cases a story that is pretty much identical. Eventually, you end up being in so many rooms where so many stories overlap. You end up witnessing the same wounds over and over again.”

This week on The Conglomerate, editorial assistant Hayden Dunbar spoke with Fall 2021 contributor Carrie R. Moore about her story “Surfacing.” In this interview, Moore discusses character and scene construction, how the body stores memory, and the importance of writing into narratives of trauma.

America's oldest continuously published literary magazine.

09/27/2021

“Our struggles continue, while Autumn—that blessed break from summer’s oppressive heat—seems to arrive later with each passing year.” —Adam Ross

Before leafing through the Fall 2021 issue—which includes fiction by Alice McDermott, Megan Mayhew Bergman, and Carrie R. Moore; nonfiction by Brian T. Edwards; poetry by Garrett Hongo and Roger Reeves; reviews by Christian Lorentzen and Justin Taylor; with a special feature on the Installation of the University of the South’s new vice-chancellor, Reuben E. Brigety II; a craft essay by Danielle Evans; and more—read a preview from editor Adam Ross. 🍎

09/24/2021

Where does a story begin? If you ask , it begins with “a moral predicament.” While serving as fiction faculty for the Sewanee Writers’ Conference this summer, Kitamura spoke with editor-at-large about her latest novel, Intimacies, as well as her 2017 novel, A Separation, and how her work explores not only the pitfalls of relationships but also of personal reckonings.

Their conversation traces Kitamura’s influences—the social dramas of Ibsen to Taylor’s own Filthy Animals—and they discuss her love of writing “set pieces.” And although Kitamura credits location as being one of the central features of her novels, she hopes her work explores the inner landscapes of the self.

In which editor-at-large Brandon Taylor interviews Katie Kitamura, author of *A Separation* and *Intimacies*. In this episode, Kitamura considers how her work explores the inner landscapes of the self.

09/03/2021

With summer near its end, our staff has suggested some books to take with you over the Labor Day weekend, and beyond.

America's oldest continuously published literary magazine.

08/13/2021

“The line shocks us into realizing that we are all strangers to language; that it is a winged thing that can transform us.”

For our Stanzas web feature, we ask writers to introduce us to their favorite poets by way of a handful of lines. This week, Emily Jungmin Yoon, whose poem “In All the Futures” appears in our Summer 2021 issue, takes a closer look at “ABC for Refugees” by Monica Sok.

America's oldest continuously published literary magazine.

07/02/2021

“It is the end of the first sentence that stuns me. At precisely the center of the poem, the speaker says to rain ‘I’ll marry you.’ Wait, what?”

For our Stanzas web feature, we ask writers to introduce us to their favorite poets by way of a handful of lines. This week, Katy Didden, whose poem “When Early Dawn Revealed Her Rose-Red Hands” appears in our Spring 2021 issue, takes a closer look at “Noche de Lluvia, San Salvador” by Aracelis Girmay.

America's oldest continuously published literary magazine.

07/01/2021

Writers: Today our fourth annual Fiction, Poetry, and Nonfiction Contest opens! Enter for a chance to win $1000 and publication in the Winter 2022 issue.

This year’s judges are , whose debut novel was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize; , the author of five books of poetry including Animal Eye, a finalist for the 2013 Kingsley Tufts Prize and winner of the UNT Rilke Prize; and , author of and the international bestseller .

Interested? Follow the link for more details!

https://thesewaneereview.com/contest