This is a revolutionary moment in that everything is changing. But it’s not a revolution, because most of the forces we’re all reacting to (pandemic, injustice, a massive failure to find common moral ground) are not forces put into … Continued
After a briefly too-long period of agonizing over the matter, I’ve concluded that it’s impossible to artistically justify why we, at TLR, wanted to do a John le Carré issue, and nearly impossible to summarize how the magazine you’re reading … Continued
The husband of one of our editors was pursuing a doctorate in Game Theory when I first arrived at the magazine six years ago. I thought then I had never heard of a more evocative subject for advanced … Continued
Women’s Studies when I was in college was a fairly straightforward, interdepartmental major that, at my school, emphasized continental literary theory and its blunter-edged cousin, identity politics, as well as (interestingly enough) health care from a social-historical perspective. Other colleges, … Continued
Ernest Hemingway met F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald in 1925 when they were all living in Paris. The Great Gatsby had just come out and, according to Fitzgerald, “was not selling well but had very fine reviews.” Hemingway pursued the … Continued
Today it seems absurd to say things like “the way things are,” or “these extraordinary times,” or “in times like these.” There aren’t really “times like these,” there is rather this time, Covid time, which redefines itself from one day … Continued
When we first started talking about this issue’s theme, I compiled in my mind a cluster of associations and ideas that emerged from granary: plenitude, agriculture, resources, food, slow steady movement. A series of images: red barns, tall silos, highways … Continued
We are living a feverish moment. Politics are heated to the point of being carnivalesque. The planet is overheated and threatens to extinguish. Tempers are high, mores are in a freefall of correction. Education is on one end a riot … Continued
I’ve been thinking about this theme of Babel Fish for almost a year now, and it’s never stopped seeming like a broad and suggestive portal for the pieces gathered here. For those who aren’t familiar with Douglas Adams’s 1979 novel … Continued
Time gives generously of its passage, and The Literary Review has been sixty long, prolific years in the making this fall. We’re celebrating our birthday with a special archival issue. We have, at last count (and we did count), published … Continued
I haven’t been in much of a surrendering mood lately, though I’m sure that I thought of surrender as an intriguing and plausible emotion when we first settled on the theme of Uncle for this issue. Art certainly doesn’t exist … Continued
Since we first planned it, I have always thought of this issue’s theme as environmentalist. “I live here”: this is my planet, my legacy, my context, resources, responsibility. But one of the advantages of gestating a literary magazine is that … Continued
Last summer our poetry editor emailed me a picture of the Blue Whale of Catoosa, a big goofy roadside attraction off Route 66 in Oklahoma. It was the coup de grace in a non-literary competition for who could dig up … Continued
Afghan girl born in Exile. Afghan Refuge Villa, Urghuch, North Pakistan, 1996. Used by permission of the artist: courtesy PACE /MACGILL Gallery. Cover artist, Fazal Sheikh, uses photographs to document people living in displaced and marginalized communities around the … Continued
I was wildly intrigued when first introduced to the concept of the fight-or-flight stress response. I ran it over furiously in my mind, calculating out “the way I was” and “what it all meant about me,” as if it were … Continued
Sometimes the TLR issue titles are esoteric because they are trying to capture the elusive theme that links all the stories and poems in a given issue. Sometimes the titles are trying to capture an elusive theme as well as … Continued
The stories and poems collected here are largely about perspective, specifically the shifting perspectives of age. Our governing principle as we chose work for this issue was youth versus age—or experience. The result is that everything you’ll read here is … Continued
It feels to me as if I’ve always known Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. As if my brain were born and instantly had Invisible Cities in its matter to refer to. But that wasn’t the order of things. Pippi Longstocking came first and … Continued
A number of years ago I began a simple research project inspired by a basically straightforward question that turned out to have a diabolically insensate answer. I wanted to find out how a person becomes a priest. I … Continued
I met our cover artist, Israeli photographer Elinor Carucci, about fifteen years ago. I’d been assigned to interview her about her debut series, Closer, by the then new arty high-concept online sex magazine, Nerve.com. Elinor’s pictures weren’t sexy—exactly. There … Continued