The American Book Review is a nonprofit, internationally distributed publication that appears six times a year. ABR specializes in reviews of frequently neglected published works of fiction, poetry, and literary and cultural criticism from small, regional, university, ethnic, avant-garde, and women's presses. ABR as a literary journal

Literary magazine

A literary magazine is a periodical devoted to literature in a broad sense. Literary magazines usually publish short stories, poetry and essays along with literary criticism, book reviews, biographical profiles of authors, interviews and letters...

 aims to project the sense of engagement that writers feel about what is being published. It is edited and produced by writers for writers and the general public and is housed at the University of Houston–Victoria

University of Houston–Victoria

The University of Houston–Victoria is a four-year state university, and is a component institution of the University of Houston System. Its campus spans 20-acre in Victoria, with satellite locations at UH System centers in Sugar Land and Cinco Ranch...

. The online content of ABR is distributed by Project MUSE

Project MUSE

Project MUSE is an online database of current and back issues of peer-reviewed humanities and social sciences journals. It was founded in 1993 by Todd Kelley and Susan Lewis and is a project of the Johns Hopkins University Press and the Milton S. Eisenhower Library. It had support from the Mellon...

.

History

Ronald Sukenick

Ronald Sukenick

Ronald Sukenick was an American writer and literary theorist.-Life:Sukenick studied at Cornell University, and wrote his doctoral thesis on Wallace Stevens, at Brandeis University ....

 founded the American Book Review in 1977. ABR was one of the first literary journals entirely devoted to reviewing works from independent presses and continues to follow that tradition today.

The American Book Review was designed to offer a unique model for reviewing books, one edited by writers themselves in an effort to reproduce the interest they took in their peers’ works of fiction, poetry, and criticism. This collective approach remained intact while responsibility for producing the journal was assumed by the University of Colorado at Boulder

University of Colorado at Boulder

The University of Colorado Boulder is a public research university located in Boulder, Colorado...

 in 1987, then by Illinois State University

Illinois State University

Illinois State University , founded in 1857, is the oldest public university in Illinois; it is located in the town of Normal. ISU is considered a "national university" that grants a variety of doctoral degrees and strongly emphasizes research; it is also recognized as one of the top ten largest...

 in 1995, and now by the University of Houston–Victoria

University of Houston–Victoria

The University of Houston–Victoria is a four-year state university, and is a component institution of the University of Houston System. Its campus spans 20-acre in Victoria, with satellite locations at UH System centers in Sugar Land and Cinco Ranch...

.

In November 2006, the editorial aspects of ABR moved from Illinois State University to the University of Houston–Victoria (UHV) under the editorship of Dr. Jeffrey R. Di Leo

Jeffrey R. Di Leo

Jeffrey R. Di Leo is Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences and Professor of English and Philosophy at the University of Houston–Victoria. He is editor and founder of the critical theory journal symplokē, editor and publisher of the American Book Review, and Executive Director of the Society for...

, Editor and Publisher of ABR and UHV's Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences. The production elements of ABR were also transferred in September 2007, making UHV the American Book Review’s single host.

Editors

Founder: Ronald Sukenick

Publisher: Jeffrey R. Di Leo

Editor: Jeffrey R. Di Leo

Managing Editor: Charles Alcorn

Assistant Editor: David C. Felts

Publisher Emeritus: Charles B. Harris

Associate Editors: Mark Amerika

Mark Amerika

Mark Amerika is an American artist and author.- Career :Amerika received his MFA from Brown University. After publishing two cult-novels, and , he turned his energy towards net art. His goal is to expand the concept of writing so that it includes writing in and with new media technologies. He...

, R.M. Berry, C. S. Giscombe, Dinda L. Gorlée, Charles R. Johnson

Charles R. Johnson

Charles R. Johnson is an American scholar and author of novels, short stories, and essays. Johnson, an African-American, has directly addressed the issues of black life in America in novels such as Middle Passage and Dreamer....

, Cris Mazza, Larry McCaffery

Larry McCaffery

Lawrence F. "Larry" McCaffery Jr. is a literary critic, editor, and retired professor of English and Comparative Literature at San Diego State University...

, Christina Milletti, Doug Nufer, Kevin Prufer

Kevin Prufer

Kevin D. Prufer is an American poet, academic, editor, and essayist. His most recent books are In A Beautiful Country and National Anthem...

, John Tytell

John Tytell

John Tytell is an American writer and academic, whose works on such literary figures as Jack Kerouac, Ezra Pound, Allen Ginsberg, Henry Miller, and William S. Burroughs, have made him both a leading scholar of the Beat Generation, and a respected name in literature in general. He has been a...

, Barry Wallenstein, Tom Williams, Eric Miles Williamson

Eric Miles Williamson

Eric Miles Williamson is an American novelist and literary critic, member of the Board of Directors of the National Book Critics Circle, editor of the American Book Review, Boulevard, and Texas Review...

Contributing Editors: Rudolfo Anaya

Rudolfo Anaya

Rudolfo Anaya is an Mexican-American author. Best known for his 1972 novel Bless Me, Ultima, Anaya is considered one of the founders of the canon of contemporary Chicano literature.- Biography :...

, Ron Arias

Ron Arias

Ron Arias is a former senior writer and correspondent for People magazine and People en Español. He is also a highly regarded Chicano writer whose novel The Road to Tamazunchale has been called "one of the founding texts in Contemporary Chicano/a Literature."-Early life:Arias is a native of Los...

, John Ashbery

John Ashbery

John Lawrence Ashbery is an American poet. He has published more than twenty volumes of poetry and won nearly every major American award for poetry, including a Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for his collection Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. But Ashbery's work still proves controversial...

, Michael Bérubé

Michael Bérubé

Michael Bérubé is the Paterno Family Professor in Literature and Director of the Institute for the Arts and Humanities at Pennsylvania State University, where he teaches cultural studies and American literature...

, Rosellen Brown

Rosellen Brown

Rosellen Brown is an American author, and has been an instructor of English and creative writing at several universities, including the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Houston...

, Andrei Codrescu

Andrei Codrescu

Andrei Codrescu is a Romanian-born American poet, novelist, essayist, screenwriter, and commentator for National Public Radio. He was Mac Curdy Distinguished Professor of English at Louisiana State University from 1984 until his retirement in 2009....

, William Demby, Rikki Ducornet

Rikki Ducornet

Rikki Ducornet is an American postmodernist, writer, poet, and artist.-Biography:...

, William Gass, Russell Hoover, Steve Katz

Steve Katz (writer)

Steve Katz is an American writer. He is considered an early post-modern or avant-garde writer for works such as The Exagggerations of Peter Prince , and Saw...

, Clarence Major

Clarence Major

- Biography :Clarence Major is a poet, painter and novelist who was born in Atlanta, Georgia and grew up in Chicago. In his early twenties he started publishing his own literary magazine, Coercion Review, which featured poets and writers such as Henry Miller, Kenneth Patchen and Lawrence...

, Michael McClure

Michael McClure

Michael McClure is an American poet, playwright, songwriter, and novelist. After moving to San Francisco as a young man, he found fame as one of the five poets who read at the famous San Francisco Six Gallery reading in 1955 rendered in barely fictionalized terms in Jack Kerouac's Dharma Bums...

, Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates is an American author. Oates published her first book in 1963 and has since published over fifty novels, as well as many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction...

, Marjorie Perloff

Marjorie Perloff

Marjorie Perloff is an Austrian-born U.S. poetry critic.Perloff was born Gabriele Mintz into a secularized Jewish family in Vienna. Faced with Nazi terror, her family emigrated in 1938 when she was six-and-a-half, going first to Zürich and then to the United States, settling in Riverdale, New York...

, Robert Peters

Robert Peters

Robert Louis Peters is a poet, critic, scholar, playwright, editor, and actor born in an impoverished rural area of northern Wisconsin in 1924. He holds a Ph.D in Victorian literature. His poetry career began in 1967 when his young son Richard died unexpectedly of spinal meningitis...

, Corinne Robins, Charles Russell, Paul Schiavo, Barry Seiler, Charles Simic

Charles Simic

Dušan "Charles" Simić is a Serbian-American poet, and was co-Poetry Editor of the Paris Review. He was appointed the fifteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 2007.-Early years:...

, Bruce Sterling

Bruce Sterling

Michael Bruce Sterling is an American science fiction author, best known for his novels and his work on the Mirrorshades anthology, which helped define the cyberpunk genre.-Writings:...

, Regina Weinreich

Select Past Issues

Past issues of American Book Review include:

Uncreative Writing (32.4)

The Latino West (32.3)

Environmental Humanities (32.1)

Cognitive Fictions (31.6)

Top 40 Bad Books (31.2)

Innovative Fiction by International Women (30.6)

Fiction's Future (30.5)

Posthumanism (30.2)

The Affective Turn (29.6)

Women of Color in Publishing (29.4)

100 Best Last Lines from Novels (29.2)

Dangerous Books (29.1)

Romanian Poetry in Translation (28.5)

100 Best First Lines from Novels (27.2)

Reading Series

The American Book Review and the University of Houston–Victoria School of Arts and Sciences have joined to create the UHV/ABR Reading Series. The series features nationally recognized writers on extended visits to the University of Houston–Victoria. Past speakers include:

Past Reading Series Speakers

Rolando Hinojosa-Smith (4/21/2011)

Beverly Lowry (3/10/2011)

Kate Bernheimer (2/17/2011)

Rachel Eliza Griffiths (2/9/2011)

Jayne Anne Phillips (1/27/2011)

Ann Weisgarber (11/4/2010)

Amelia Gray (10/21/2010)

Diana Lopez (9/23/2010)

John Dufresne (9/2/2010)

Bret Anthony Johnston (4/22/2010)

Curtis White (3/25/2010)

Jake Silverstein (3/8/2010)

Darlene H. Unrue (2/18/2010)

Charles Johnson (1/28/2010)

Cris Mazza (11/19/2009)

Andrew Porter (10/22/2009)

Tony Diaz (10/1/2009)

George Singleton (9/3/2009)

Ana Castillo (4/30/2009)

Zulfikar Ghose (4/2/2009)

John O'Brien (3/12/2009)

Michael Martone (2/19/2009)

Marjorie Perloff (1/22/2009)

Antonya Nelson (11/20/2008)

Mark Doty (10/21/2008)

Kim Herzinger (8/28/2008)

Farnoosh Moshiri (4/24/2008)

Lance Olsen (4/3/2008)

David M. Oshinsky (2/28/2008)

Tom Williams (1/24/2008)

Robert Phillips (11/15/2007)

R.M. Berry (10/25/2007)

Dagoberto Gilb (9/20/2007)

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (8/30/2007)

Andrei Codrescu (5/11/2007)

Raymond Federman (4/12/2007)

Angela Ball (3/8/2007)

Justin Cronin (2/1/2007)

Eric Miles Williamson (11/10/2006)

Graciela Limón (9/13/2006)