Boulevard (magazine)
 | |
| Discipline | Literary magazine |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Edited by | Richard Burgin |
| Publication details | |
| Publisher | |
Publication history | 1985 to present |
| Frequency | Biannual |
| Indexing | |
| ISSN |
0885-9337 |
| Links | |
Boulevard magazine, published by St. Louis University,[1] is an American literary magazine that publishes award-winning prose and poetry. Boulevard has been called "one of the half-dozen best literary journals" by Poet Laureate Daniel Hoffman in The Philadelphia Inquirer. The magazine is based in Richmond Heights, Missouri.[1]
History
Boulevard was founded in 1985[2] in New York City by Richard Burgin, who served as editor-in-chief through 2015.[3] Its first issue featured new fiction by Nobel laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer, new poetry by Kenneth Koch, and interviews with renowned composers Philip Glass and Steve Reich and an essay on John Dos Passos and the Soviet Cinema appeared on January 2, 1986. By its third issue in 1987, Boulevard had attained national bookstore distribution, which it has continued to enjoy throughout the rest of its history. In 1989 the magazine moved its base from New York to Philadelphia. In 1991 the magazine began to be published by Drexel University in Philadelphia where Richard Burgin taught. In the fall of 1996, Professor Burgin and the magazine moved to St. Louis and St. Louis University became its publisher, until the magazine became independent in 2013.
Poet Charles Simic has called it one of the eight best literary magazines in America,[4] and Independent Publisher says the poems in Boulevard are "better than anything that you'll find in The New Yorker in a typical month."[5]
Notable Contributors
Alice Adams
John Ashbery
John Barth
Ann Beattie
Robert Bly
Mark Doty
Marilyn Hacker
Donald Hall
Philip Levine
David Mamet
Joyce Carol Oates
Carl Phillips
Francine Prose
Ruth Stone
Charles Simic
Mark Strand
James Tate
John Updike.[5]
Honors and awards
The magazine has won city, state, and national grants and awards. Many poems, stories and essays are reprinted in anthologies such as The Best American Poetry series, The Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize, The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, and The Best American Essays.[3]
Current Staff
Richard Burgin, Publisher
Jessica Rogen, Editor
The type of submissions its editor likes
In a 2003 interview, Burgin said, "My suspicion, especially of many MFA writers, is that they are writing what they think will get published and are not sufficiently interested in exploring the form. [...] In Boulevard's slush pile, I find very little experimentation in form and structure. The stuff is tame. I see very little experimentation in point of view, in language. The subject matter is generally politically correct. Political correctness is the most noxious disease and enemy of the literary artist of our current time."[3]
Notes
- 1 2 "Literary Journals". Missouri Center for the Book. Retrieved December 10, 2015.
- ↑ "Top 50 Literary Magazine". EWR. Retrieved August 17, 2015.
- 1 2 3 "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2007-01-08. Retrieved 2007-02-01. Web page titled "Interview with Eric Miles Williamson in Pleiades, a journal of new writing" at Richard Burgin's Web site, Retrieved January 31, 2007, according to the Web page: "This interview was conducted by Eric Miles Williamson in the summer of 2003 and Robin Theiss in the summer of 2005. The Williamson portion first appeared in Volume 24:2 issue of the literary journal, Pleiades, 2004."
- ↑ The New York Review of Books, July 2, 2003
- 1 2 Boulevard magazine home page, Retrieved January 29, 2010