The Missouri Review 49.2 (Summer 2026) is themed “Comeback Kids.” Included in this issue is new fiction from Roseanne Pereira, M. E. Liu, Laura Ender, and Jennifer Galvão; debut nonfiction from SNL writer Douglas Abeles as well as new essays from Chris Mirams and David J. Frost; new poetry from Xochi Quetzali Cartland, Melanie Tafejian, and Samantha Strong Murphey. Also included is the feature “Curio Cabinet” on the career of Paul Robeson, an art feature on Marie Laurencin and the modern salons of France, an interview with short story writer David Ryan, and a review of three books by Wendy C. Ortiz.

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The Missouri Review Issue 49.1 (Spring 2026) is themed “The Cost of Living” and opens with a foreword by Speer Morgan who traces inflation from America’s founding to our contemporary anxieties, reflecting on the roles of scarcity, ambition, literature, and the emotional costs of survival. The issue goes on to highlight The Missouri Reviews 2025 Editors’ Prize winners: Peter Kessler (fiction), Eden Mecham (nonfiction), and Seth Simons (poetry). Readers will also enjoy discovering debut fiction from Emrys Penrose, new fiction from Yi Jiang and Geneviève Mathis, new poetry from Alissa M. Barr and Martin Rock, new nonfiction from Denise Galica and Marina Hatsopoulos, features on Modigliani and Mae West, and a review of three recent poetry collection considered in the context of the legacy of Confessionalism.

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The Winter 2025 issue of The Missouri Review (48.4) is themed “Strange Bedfellows” and includes the winners of the 2025 Perkoff Prize for fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, as well as debut fiction from Jeanne Rogow and Laura Dedmon. Additionally, there is new fiction from Rachel Lastra, new poetry from William Virgil Davis and Sascha Feinstein, essays from Lauren Fath and Askold Melnyczuk, and articles on Jules Chéret and Anna Pavlova. Also inside: an omnibus review of three novels about the future from Luke Dunne, and an interview with the fiction writer Curtis Sittenfield.

Cover art: Roomhate by Yelena Bryksenkova

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The Fall 2025 issue of The Missouri Review (46.3) is themed “Under the Influence,” which opens with Editor Speer Morgan’s commentary, “Much of this issue concerns altered states of consciousness caused by illness, personal struggles, and drugs.” and goes on to explore how altered states — especially those induced by alcohol — shape personal experience and historical events. Speer traces alcohol’s long cultural role from colonial America’s heavy consumption to his own ‘youthful encounters’ with drinking. Like Speer’s commentary, this issue features works that provide a collective reflection on society’s evolving relationship with alcohol and its lasting impact, as well as other ‘influencers.’

Readers can enjoy debut fiction from Arabella Sanders, plus new stories from Seth Fried, Philip Hurst, and Brecht de Poortere; new poetry from Kai-Carlson Wee, Rebecca Foust, and Campbell McGrath; new essays from Jacob M. Appel, Molly Rideout, Cara Stoddard, and S.L. Wisenberg; features on Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Marlene Dietrich; and an omnibus review of four short story collections from Robert Long Foreman.

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The Missouri Review Summer 2025 issue is themed “Location, Location, Location,” as Speer Morgan comments in the Foreword, “Location is as important in literature and art as it is in real estate. When and where and among whom — setting and milieu — anchor readers and allow them to enter an imagined world.” Referencing the unique perspectives of Honoré de Balzac, Andrew Wyeth, and Syd Mead, Morgan concludes, “The essays, poems, and short stories in this issue of TMR are quite different yet illustrate that location in art matters. These writers all take us somewhere special.”

Additionally, readers will enjoy new fiction from Katherine Cart, Thea Chacamaty, Maria Kuznetsova, and Perry Lopez; new poetry from Andrew Hemmert, J.S. Westbrook, and Emma Winsor Wood; and new nonfiction by Seán Carlson, Zack Ford, and Rose Whitmore. Also included is an art feature about the painter Suzanne Valadon. The publication’s feature ‘Curio Cabinet’ highlights “Alfred Cheney Johnston: Master of the Publicity Photo” and his “contributions to the iconic flapper figure.”

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The Spring 2025 issue of The Missouri Review (Sprint 2025) is themed “Outsiders” and includes the winners of the 2024 Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize, plus debut fiction by Jeffery Brady, new fiction by Phuong Anh Le, William Torrey, Drew Calvert, and Mark Labowskie. New poetry from Rebe Huntman, Liane Strauss, and Amanda Gunn, and new essays by Sarah Mullens and Justin Thurman. Also, an art feature on James Ensore, and a new “Curio Cabinet” on Theda Bara, and a omnibus review of four novels about becoming a mother by Cynthia Miller Coffel.

This is also the first issue that will be available worldwide on Project MUSE via Open Access here.

This Winter 2024 issue of The Missouri Review is themed “Sanctuary” and features the winners of the 2024 Perkoff Prize along with new fiction from Doug Crandell, Julia Ridley Smith, and Tate Gieselmann, new poetry from Kate Gaskin and Kara van de Graaf, and new essays from J. Malcom Garcia and prize-winning baker Graison Gill. Readers will also discover an art feature on Tsuguharu Foujita in Paris and a “Curio Cabinet” exploring the friendship of Mary Pickford and Frances Marion in early Hollywood, plus an omnibus book review on recent books considering the nature and place of stories in our contemporary moment.

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The Fall 2024 issue of The Missouri Review is themed “Hard Truths.” As Editor Speer Morgan writes in the Foreword, “Most literature goes beyond period and type and deals with something hard, elusive, or even contradictory. Its power lies in the odd beauty and coherence of this particular engagement with a subject.” Inside, readers will discover powerful works ready to engage: new fiction from Parul Kaushik, Andrew De Silva, and Joe Wilkins; new poetry from Amy Miller, Austen Leah Rose, and Talin Tahajian; and new essays from Shannon Cain, Nancy L. Glass, and Joshua Ritter. Plus an Art Feature on Otto Dix, a Curio Cabinet about Peggy Guggenheim, and a brand-new interview with Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw. Cover art: The Death of Icarus, Alexandre Cabanel (1823-1889).

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The Missouri Review Summer 2024 is themed, “In the Altogether” and features debut fiction by Sara Beth Greene and Ina Lipkowitz, as well as new fiction from Mark Barlex and Hana Choi, new poems from Chaun Ballard, Amorak Huey, and Tina Schumann, and new essays from Jennifer Anderson, Nancy Jainchill, and Allen M. Price. Also included is an art feature on contemporary dada and an interview with classics scholar and acclaimed translator of The Odyssey and The Iliad, Emily Wilson. Cover art by Thomas Lerooy, Disclosure (2019).

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The Missouri Review Spring 2024 issue is themed “Animal Kingdom” and features the 2023 Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize Winners, plus new fiction from Louise Marburg and Jessie Lee Brooks, new poetry by Fleda Brown and John Okrent, and new essays from Debra Dean, Maureen Stanton, and Kathryn Wilder. Also: an arts feature on anti-portraiture in contemporary art, a review of three biographies of three artistic power couples, and an interview with Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Carl Phillips.

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The Missouri Review Winter 2023 (46.4) is themed “Family Affairs.” Inside, readers will find work from the winners of the 2023 Perkoff Prize, new fiction from Elisa Faison, Robert Long Foreman, Stef Pixner, and Amanda Rea; new poetry from Virginia Konchan and Christine Marshall; and new nonfiction from Adam Boggon. Also: features on Robert Henri and Eva Tanguay; an omnibus review of four memoirs of parents from Cynthia Miller Coffel, and Michael Piafsky’s interview with Andrew Leland, author of The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight, named one of the best books of the year by the New Yorker, Washington Post, Atlantic, NPR, Publishers Weekly, and Lithub.

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The Fall 2023 issue of The Missouri Review is themed “The Curious Past.” Inside, readers will find historical fiction by Aaron Gwyn, a consideration of Norman Mailer in his centennial year by Bill Barich, stories by Genevieve Abravanel, Richard Bausch, and Joana Pearson, essays from Gregory Martin and Peter LaSalle, and poems by Tin Fogdall, Catherine Pond, and Mike Schneider. Art features include “Maud Allan and the Price of Fame” and “Edward Hopper and the Art of Voyeurism” by Kristine Somerville. Reviews in this issue by Andrew Mulvania focus on poets in “Whose Life Is It, Anyway? Lives of the Poets and the Evolving Art of Biography.” Cover art by Jolene Lai, Sarah’s Secret, 2011, oil on canvas.

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Status is the theme of the Summer 2023 issue of The Missouri Review, as Editor Speer Morgan writes in the foreword, “status…with the storytelling that illuminates it, encompasses more than just economic or social position. For most living creatures, status can impact both intraspecific and interspecific chances of survival.” Exploring this theme is new speculative fiction by Emily Mitchell, Naeem Murr, and Jonathan Wei, new stories from John Fulton and Becky Mandelbaum, new poetry by Aaron Coleman, Cynthia Marie Hoffman, and Stephanie Niu, and essays from Grace Plowden and Kathleen Spivack. There is also an arts feature on Vanitas: the Art of Death and Decay, work on Clara Bow, and a review essay on recent books about Gay Life in the 20th and 21st centuries. Cover art: Mirror Head by Estanislao Gonczanski (2018).

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The Spring 2023 issue of The Missouri Review (46.1) is introduced by Speer Morgan’s Foreward, “Seize the Day,” and features winners of the 2022 Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize: Ann-Marie Blanchard for fiction, Robin Reif for essay, and Heidi Seaborn for poetry. Also included in this issue is new fiction from Rita Ayoshi, Jennafer D’Alvia, Threse Eiben, and Abby Geni; new poetry from Kathryn Bratt-Pfotenhauer and Benjamin Grossberg; and new nonfiction from Anu Kumar and Joe Walpole. There is an arts feature by Kristine Somerville, “Man Ray: Reluctant Celebrity Photographer,” and the Curio Cabinet section houses “Gerda Wegener and the Pleasures of Art Deco.” Rounding out the issue is a review column by Sam Pickering, “Deep Listening and Time Passing: Five Recent Nonfiction Books of Note.” Cover art: Skater by Alex Colville (1964).

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In addition to featuring winners of the 2022 Perkoff Prize, The Missouri Review Winter 2022 is themed “The Body” and includes new fiction from Dina Guidubaldi, Shala Erlich, Malerie Willens, Peter Grimes, and Robynne Graffam; new poetry from Bridget O’Bernstein, Anna V. Q. Ross, and Jeff Whitney; and new essays from Faith Shearin, Adam Boggon, and Joshua Doležal. Also included are features on dressing Greta Garbo and the influence of anime on contemporary art, and an omnibus review of contemporary memoirs about coming to terms with illness and affliction.

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Editor Speer Morgan, in the Foreward to The Missouri Review Fall 2022 issue, comments on the “compelling new techniques in the arts” that, while innovative at their onset, “are often picked up and imitated until they seem to have always been used.” This issue’s theme, “Deep Focus,” comes from the technique used in early film, such as the 1922 Weimar production of Nosferatu, and Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane. He goes on to draw parallels with Walt Whitman’s “broad theme: We are large, we contain multitudes. We are partly right, partly wrong, but given the transience of life, we should fully visit this moment and this gathering of people with compassion, cheer, and attentiveness and then move on.” Great advice for the many seasonal family gatherings we encounter as well as other situations which bring us together, including reading the lives of authors and narrators in literary works. Included for readers in this issue is new fiction from Drew Calvert, Jonathan Johnson, Matthew Niell Null, Valerie Sayers, and Rohini Sunderam. New poetry from Andrew Hemmert, Rebecca Lindenberg, and Felicia Zamora. Essays by Robert Cochran, Jim Steck, and Mako Yoshikawa. Features on James Van Der Zee’s Harlem Renaissance photography, Florine Stettheimer and the Art of Modern New York, with an omnibus review from Lisa Katz on books by and about translators.

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Themed “Rescue Me,” the newest issue of The Missouri Review bids a final goodbye to Summer 2002 with new fiction from Caroline Casper, Sam Dunnington, Tim Erwin, Nur Kahn, and Amy Stuber. Essays by Christopher Kempf and Daniel J. Waters. Poetry from Davis McCombs, Kelan Nee, and Rachel Richardson. Also: Curio Cabinet on the marketing of Amelia Earhart, Art Feature on Dodo in Berlin, and a review from Sam Pickering.

The Missouri Review Spring 2022 issue (45.1) features the 2021 Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize Winners: Alix Christie (fiction), Matthew Wamser (essay), Jennifer Perrine (poetry), as well as a special feature with Michale Millner on the Jack Kerouac Archive and a portfolio of artwork by Kristine Somerville in full color, “Boxed In: The Art of Assemblage.” The issue also includes Poetry from Kelli Russell Agodon and David Moolten, Fiction from Joy Baglio, John Fulton, and Peter Mountford, Essays by Susan Neville and William Roebuck, plus: “America’s Left Bank: Jessie Tarbox Beal’s Greenwich Village Photographs.”

The Missouri Review Winter 2021 (“Take Heart”) issue features the winners of our 2021 Perkoff Prize for writing that engages evocatively with health/medicine. A stunning art feature on contemporary photography, debut fiction by Mason Kiser, translated work of Tomaž  Šalamun, and a probing essay on the poetry of mourning round out the issue. More info at The Missouri Review website.

How Did I Get Here? Inside: Poetry by Jessica Garratt, Rebecca Lehman, Maggie Queeney, and Joe Wilkins. Stories and essays by Jason Brown, Morris E. Hartstein MD, Kristen Iskandrian, Judith Claire Mitchell, Devin Murphy, Clare Needham, and David M. Sheridan, with features on Barbette and Duchamp, and a review of new and recent Southern writing from Sam Pickering. Now at the Missouri Review website.