Western Book Roundup

Western Literary Magazine Roundup

By Jenny Shank, 11-25-09

In this week’s Roundup, I’ll be taking a look at a few of the many literary magazines in our region.

Whitefish Review is a journal based in Whitefish, Montana, that is five issues and two years into what will hopefully be a long and fruitful run.  Recently Whitefish Review gained nonprofit status from the IRS, which will allow them to seek grants and accept donations.  In a press release, founding editor Brian Schott described the journal’s mission: “From the beginning, we wanted to see if we could create a non-commercial publishing venue for the increasingly sprawling network of artists, photographers, and writers in the interior American West.” Lynette Hintze wrote a profile of the Whitefish Review in The Daily Interlake, in which the editors discuss how they got an interview with John Irving for the Spring 2010 issue.

Whitefish Review features nonfiction, fiction, poetry, art, and photography, and has published a number of the region’s best-known writers, such as Rick Bass, Terry Tempest Williams, Pam Houston, and Tim Cahill.  But judging from the last few issues, the journal’s emphasis is on featuring new writers, including some young winners of a local high school writing contest.  The Whitefish Review will have its next open submission period from January 1 through March 15.  The next issue hits bookstores (and will be available for purchase online) on December 17.  It will include work by London-based writer and philosopher Alain de Botton, skier Scot Schmidt, and political cartoonist Jeff Danziger.

Missoula’s CutBank, based in the University of Montana’s Creative Writing program, just extended the deadline for its Big Fish Online contest until December 1.  They are accepting submissions of poetry, fiction, nonfiction and art for the $100 prize and publication in CutBank online.

The fine Isotope: A Journal of Literary Nature and Science Writing could use some subscribers—its home base is Utah State University, and like many college-based journals, Isotope is facing budget cuts.  It’s the perfect magazine for scientists with a literary bent, or poets who have a thing for rocks. 

In a recent issue, two pieces celebrated their authors’ passion for rocks.  In “Mountain Eros,” Anna Mills described her experience of having a ”geogasm“: “My raptures over the ice water, the glacier polish and the curled petals of the rein orchids approach sexual excitement.  For a long time, I thought this unusual.  It embarrassed and pleased me to think myself unique.  When I began to read literature about nature, however, I found erotic feelings for rock, tree and fruit everywhere, even in the classics.  Thoreau declares, ‘All nature is my bride.’ Whitman cries, ‘I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked,//I am mad for it to be in contact with me.’”

Poet Sheryl St. Germain agrees—her poem, “Orogeny: A Lesson in Geology,” begins:

Orogeny sounds too much like erogenous,
so in the beginning of the geologist’s lecture
I think she’s describing a sort of erotics
of mountain building…

Several essays that first appeared in Isotope have been included in the anthologies The Best American Science and Nature Writing, The Best American Essays, and The Best Creative Nonfiction.

The Idaho Review, based at Boise State University, published its first issue ten years ago and quickly climbed to the top of the national literary magazine scene.  It celebrated that milestone with its Tenth Anniversary Issue this year, which includes a tribute to the late Carol Houck Smith, an editor for sixty years at W.W. Norton, who discovered and nurtured many Western writers.  Writers she worked with including Pam Houston, Rick Bass, Andrea Barrett, Ron Carlson, and Kim Barnes offer their remembrances.  The issue also features new work by Wyoming’s Alyson Hagy, Montana’s Pete Fromm, and Oregon’s Joseph Millar.

If you represent a literary magazine in this region, please with information for a future column, or contact me via Twitter.

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