Guide to Literary Magazines

Shenandoah

The Washington and Lee University Review

Mattingly House / 2 Lee Avenue

Washington and Lee University

Lexington, VA 24450-2116

Phone: (540) 458-8765

E-mail: shenandoah <at> wlu <dot> edu

Simultaneous submissions: yes (see website) Email submissions: no Reading period: 9/1-5/15 Response time: 3-4 weeks Payment: yes (see website) Contests: yes (see website) ISSN: 0037-3583 Founded: 1950 Issues per year: 3 Average pages: 200 Cover price: $12 Sample price (postpaid): $10 Subscription (individuals): $25 Subscription (institutions): $27 (see website for Canadian and foreign subscription rates)

Publisher’s description: Shenandoah: The Washington and Lee University Review has published poetry, fiction, essays and reviews by luminaries such as William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, e.e. cummings, Sally Mann, Fred Chappell, Mary Oliver, J. R. R. Tolkien, Robert Lowell, Wallace Stevens, Anne Tyler, Cy Twombly and more. It’s certain, given this rich history, that the writers and artists we’re publishing today will become household names tomorrow. “The best literary magazines have always endeavored to discover, accommodate and sustain good writing… Shenandoah does all three.” -- Booklist

From the cover art to the Editor’s Note, Shenandoah consistently delights, surprises, and inspires. –Claudia Emerson, winner 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Shenandoah publishes work which displays passionate understanding, formal accomplishment and serious mischief. Work first published in Shenandoah is regularly selected for Best American Short Stories, New Stories from the South, Best American Poetry, Poetry Daily (online), Best American Essays and other anthologies.

“… a ‘little’ magazine notable for not being little in its aspirations or delivery." -- USA Today.

Recent issues:

59.3 (Winter 2009) features a cover and portfolio of paintings of Blue Ridge landscapes by Barry Vance, each in dialogue with an Appalachian literary passage chosen by the author. Also, poems about hummingbirds, “deep red patches of dusted rubies,” Buck Owens bawling, a white bark pine cone and more. And a memoir by Robert Benson about his youthful experiences on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, a story about real and imagined events on a school playground, and a girl’s leg “amid the green and leafy plants that grow along the river bottom.”

59.2 (Fall 2009) Bees, dancing in the snow, honeymoons, horses, “Miss June, 1971” and more. Included is Jeffrey Hammond’s essay about men’s hats and the life experiences they can convey and Sheba Karim’s story from the perspective of Muslim Americans. Also new work by Holly Goddard Jones, Rebecca Makkai and Susan Tekulve. And poems by Robert Wrigley, Andrew Hudgins, Cathryn Hankla, David Bottoms and others. Plus Bruce Bays’ interview with Robert Olmstead.

59.1 (Spring/Summer 2009) features work by Lee Smith, Maxine Kumin, Stephen Dunn and others. And “Divination,” white wind, Arbus, Giotto, Lorenzetti / “Emily Dickinson’s Herbarium,” / Kathy Mattea’s “Coal” / the shadow of the nurses and a sorrowful farm sale / storm horses / “the doing undone” / bad champagne and trashy novels / “ a bee thrumming in a hive” / reviews of Roth and Raz / “The sun was a rose streak too faint to have faith in.”