The Threepenny Review

"The Threepenny Review" is an American literary magazine now in its third decade. It is published in Berkeley, California by founding editor Wendy Lesser. Maintaining a quarterly schedule (March, June, September, December), it offers fiction, memoirs, poetry, essays and criticism to a readership of 10,000. Without the support of patrons or a university, the publication has an annual budget of $200,000. [ [http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/27/books/27jour.html?pagewanted=1&oref=login Lee, Felicia. "A Little Journal for Nearly Every Literary Voice," "The New York Times", December 27, 2004.] ]

The magazine was launched in 1980 after Lesser (then 27 years old with no editing experience) was a guest editor of Ron Nowicki's "San Francisco Review of Books". She found the experience so rewarding that she decided to create her own publication, and the first issue of "The Threepenny Review" appeared three months later. [ [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/01/07/DDGL4ALIBK17.DTL Guthmann, Edward. "Threepenny Review marks 25 years of doggedly panning for literary gold," "San Francisco Chronicle", January 7, 2005.] ] She chose the title for its "obvious Brechtian overtones." [ [http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/bookauth/ba990324.htm Bolick, Katie. "Truth Enters In" "The Atlantic": Atlantic Unbound, March 17, 1999.] ]

It sometimes features an essay symposium, as described by critic Deborah Mead in reviewing issue 104 (Winter 2006)::What sets "The Threepenny Review" apart from other little magazines is its cultural essays. A frequent feature of this journal is the symposium, a series of essays on a single topic. The essayists in this issue focus on plot, many writing to defend plot from its current disfavor, although Geoff Dyer chimes in to denigrate plot some more. Other essays tackle unexpected topics—music and pain, Dylan’s worst song, the placebo effect—with insight and lucidity. [ [http://www.newpages.com/magazinestand/litmags/reviews_archive_2006/2006_3/mar2006litmags.htm Mead, Deborah. Literary Magazines: "The New Pages Literary Magazine Reviews"] ]

Contributors

Poetry from the magazine has frequently been reprinted in the "Best American Poetry" series. Authors published in the magazine include Jacob M. Appel, André Aciman, John Berger, Frank Bidart, Jane Bowles, Anne Carson, Maud Casey, T. J. Clark, Margaret Drabble, Geoff Dyer, Deborah Eisenberg, Louise Glück, Seamus Heaney, A. L. Kennedy, August Kleinzahler, Philip Levine, David Mamet, Greil Marcus, Sigrid Nunez, Cynthia Ozick, Dale Peck, Adam Phillips, Robert Pinsky, Mark Rudman, Kay Ryan, Oliver Sacks, Luc Sante, Elizabeth Tallent, Lawrence Weschler and Frederick Wiseman.

"The Threepenny Review" has published more literary work of Javier Marías than any other American magazine. Cover art, often selected from works at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, has run the gamut from Edward Hopper to W. Eugene Smith.

On June 16, 2006 Lesser created an online ancillary spin-off for her own writing, The Lesser Blog. A selection of various contributions to "The Threepenny Review" can also be read at the magazine's website.

References

ee also

*Evergreen Review
*Granta
*The Massachusetts Review
*New World Writing
*North American Review
*The Paris Review
*Ploughshares
*Transatlantic Review
*Utne Reader

External links

* [http://www.threepennyreview.com/index.html "The Threepenny Review"]
* [http://www.threepennyreview.com/lesserblog.html The Lesser Blog]