Book Reviews
A Life Guided by the Arts
A Zone of Indistinction
Nightmares of the Voiceless
Spreading the Good News of Nancy Lemann
The Roving Mistress of Vibes
The Mania of Finding Meaning
Way, Way Above the Rim
You’re Allowed to Laugh
In Dreams Begin Responsibilities
About
Founded in 1915 and housed on the campus of Southern Methodist University, Southwest Review is the third-longest-running literary quarterly in the United States. SwR has featured many important writers, including D. H. Lawrence, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Robert Penn Warren, Allen Ginsberg, Annie Dillard, and Anne Carson.
Five Nobel winners—Saul Bellow, Naguib Mahfouz, Nadine Gordimer, Orhan Pamuk, and Annie Ernaux—have published inside its covers. The magazine is also known for eyeing talent before it becomes widely recognized.
In 1960 SwR printed a poem by an unknown Texan named Larry McMurtry, followed a year later by an excerpt from his debut novel. On our centennial, former fiction editor Ben Fountain remarked, “The roll call of heavyweights who’ve appeared in its pages stands up to any American magazine, large or small, of the past 100 years.”