Guide to Literary Magazines

Prairie Schooner

PO Box 880334

201 Andrews Hall

University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Lincoln, NE 68588-0334

Phone: (402) 472-0911

Simultaneous submissions: no Email submissions: no Reading period: 9/1-5/1 Response time: 3-4 months Payment: no Contests: yes (see website) ISSN: 0032-6682 Founded: 1926 Issues per year: 4 Distributors: Ingram Periodicals, Source InterLink Average pages: 200 Sample copy (postpaid): $6 Cover Price: $9 Subscription (Individuals): $28 Subscription (Libraries): $30

Publisher’s Description: Prairie Schooner, a national literary quarterly published with the support of the English Department at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the University of Nebraska Press, is home to the best fiction, poetry, essays, and reviews being published today by beginning, mid-career, and established writers.

To celebrate Prairie Schooner’s tenth birthday, associate editor Maurice Johnson wrote in 1937: "Like other little magazines, the Schooner was not published for money's sake, paid nothing for contributions, and sought to print the work of new writers not yet accepted by the wealthy, policy-bound periodicals. Unlike most little magazines, the Schooner has been long-lived. . . and it has published the early work of more than twenty writers whose subsequent appearances in print have brought them general recognition."

Johnson’s vision has been upheld in Prairie Schooner’s more than eighty years of publication, and the modest figure of twenty writers has swelled to hundreds of authors who got their start at Prairie Schooner. The magazine has presented work by Pulitzer Prize winners, Nobel laureates, National Endowment for the Arts recipients, and Guggenheim Fellows. Work first published in Prairie Schooner has been reprinted or cited in the Pushcart Prize anthologies and many volumes of the Best American series.

Recent issues:

Winter 2009 Vol 83.4 - Guest editors grabbed the reins for this issue of Prairie Schooner. For poetry, Carrie Shipers. For prose, James Engelhardt. How’d they do? New poetry from Linda Pastan, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Charles Harper Webb, John Casteen, Doug Ramspeck, and Robert Nazarene. Essays about trapping by Steve Oberlechner, pornography by Heather Sellers, god and gender by Joy Ladin, and Teach for America by Heather Kirn. Carrie and James also managed to squeeze in some stories and reviews.

Fall 2009 Vol 83.3 - Groovy guest Editor Grace Bauer assembles a supergroup of talent for the Fall 2009 Baby Boomer issue. Ai and Charles Bernstein. Toi Derricotte and Albert Goldbarth. Annie Finch, Marianne Boruch, Franz Wright, and so many others it makes you wonder if it will ever wear off. Sex, drugs, rock-n-roll, it’s all here. But it’s a little bit different forty years after Woodstock, and the glasses aren’t at all rosy.

Summer 2009 Vol 83.2 - This issue is hot enough to grill on! You’ll find vacation prose from Lori Ostlund and Colleen Kinder, and a flood story from Jason Brown to cool you down. Moira Linehan and Roy Jacobstein look at the poetic details of summer life. New work from Jehanne Dubrow, Alicia Ostriker, Alex Lemon, and enough other pieces to keep you happy at the pool for days. Reviews of Mark Doty, Floyd Skloot, Ely Shipley and more.