The Threepenny Review is an American literary magazine

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...

 founded in 1980. It is published in Berkeley, California

Berkeley, California

Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...

 by founding editor Wendy Lesser

Wendy Lesser

Wendy Lesser is an American critic, novelist, and editor based in Berkeley, California.Lesser did her undergraduate work at Harvard College and her graduate work at University of California, Berkeley, with time in between at King's College, Cambridge...

. 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.

History

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

San Francisco Review of Books

San Francisco Review of Books was a book review periodical published from the mid-1970s to 1997 in the Bay Area. Founding editor-publisher Ronald Nowicki launched his publication April 1975, a time when the San Francisco Chronicle depended on the wire services for its reviews...

. 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. She chose the title for its "obvious Brechtian overtones."

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

Geoff Dyer

Geoff Dyer is a British author and novelist. He is also a journalist who writes about a wide range of topics. His published work includes four novels and several books of non-fiction, which have won a number of literary awards...

 chimes in to denigrate plot some more. Other essays tackle unexpected topics—music and pain, Dylan

Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...

’s worst song, the placebo effect—with insight and lucidity.

Contributors

Authors published in the magazine include Jacob M. Appel

Jacob M. Appel

Jacob M. Appel is an American author, bioethicist and social critic. He is best known for his short stories, his work as a playwright, and his writing in the fields of reproductive ethics, organ donation, neuroethics and euthanasia....

, André Aciman

André Aciman

-External links:***...

, John Berger

John Berger

John Peter Berger is an English art critic, novelist, painter and author. His novel G. won the 1972 Booker Prize, and his essay on art criticism Ways of Seeing, written as an accompaniment to a BBC series, is often used as a university text.-Education:Born in Hackney, London, England, Berger was...

, Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry is an American man of letters, academic, cultural and economic critic, and farmer. He is a prolific author of novels, short stories, poems, and essays...

, Frank Bidart

Frank Bidart

Frank Bidart is an American academic and poet.-Biography:In 1957, he began to study at the University of California at Riverside and went on to Harvard, where he was a student and friend of Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop...

, Eavan Boland

Eavan Boland

-Biography:Boland's father, Frederick Boland, was a career diplomat and her mother, Frances Kelly, was a noted post-expressionist painter. She was born in Dublin in 1944. At the age of six, Boland's father was appointed Irish Ambassador to the United Kingdom; the family followed him to London,...

, Roberto Bolaño

Roberto Bolaño

Roberto Bolaño Ávalos was a Chilean novelist and poet. In 1999 he won the Rómulo Gallegos Prize for his novel Los detectives salvajes , and in 2008 he was posthumously awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction for his novel 2666, which was described by board member Marcela Valdes...

, Jane Bowles

Jane Bowles

Jane Bowles, born Jane Sydney Auer , was an American writer and playwright.-Early life:Born into a Jewish family in New York, Jane Bowles spent her childhood in Woodmere, New York, on Long Island. She developed tuberculous arthritis of the knee as a teenager and her mother took her to Switzerland...

, Robert Olen Butler

Robert Olen Butler

Robert Olen Butler is an American fiction writer. His short-story collection A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1993.-Early life:...

, Anne Carson

Anne Carson

Anne Carson is a Canadian poet, essayist, translator and professor of Classics. Carson lived in Montreal for several years and taught at McGill University, the University of Michigan, and at Princeton University from 1980-1987....

, T. J. Clark

T. J. Clark

T. J. Clark may refer to:*T. J. Clark , Timothy James Clark, art historian*T. J. Clark , NASCAR driver*Timothy J. Clark...

, Henri Cole

Henri Cole

Henri Cole is an award-winning American poet.-Biography:Henri Cole was born in Fukuoka, Japan, to an American father and French mother, and raised in Virginia, United States. His father, a North Carolinian, enlisted in the service after graduating from high school and, while stationed in...

, W. S. Di Piero

W. S. Di Piero

William S. Di Piero is an American poet, translator, and essayist.-Life:He grew up in an Italian working class neighborhood. He attended St. Joseph's College in Philadelphia and received a Master's degree from San Francisco State University in 1971.He taught at Louisiana State University, and...

, Mark Doty

Mark Doty

Mark Doty is an American poet and memoirist.-Biography:He was born in Maryville, Tennessee, earned his Bachelor of Arts from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, and received his Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from Goddard College in Vermont.In 1989, his partner Wally Roberts tested...

, Margaret Drabble, Geoff Dyer

Geoff Dyer

Geoff Dyer is a British author and novelist. He is also a journalist who writes about a wide range of topics. His published work includes four novels and several books of non-fiction, which have won a number of literary awards...

, Deborah Eisenberg, Paula Fox

Paula Fox

Paula Fox is an American author of novels for adults and children and two memoirs. Her novel The Slave Dancer received the Newbery Medal in 1974; and in 1978, she was awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Medal. More recently, A Portrait of Ivan won the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis in 2008.Her...

, Dagoberto Gilb

Dagoberto Gilb

Dagoberto Gilb is an American writer born in Los Angeles, California, whose reputation, after years between L.A. and Texas, is as one of the leading voices from the American Southwest....

, Louise Glück

Louise Glück

Louise Elisabeth Glück is an American poet of Hungarian Jewish heritage. She was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 2003, after serving as a Special Bicentennial Consultant three years prior in 2000....

, Charlie Haas

Charles S. Haas

Charles S. Haas , also known as Charles Haas or Charlie Haas, is an American screenwriter and actor, and novelist....

, Donald Hall

Donald Hall

Donald Hall is an American poet. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 2006.-Personal life:...

, Seamus Heaney

Seamus Heaney

Seamus Heaney is an Irish poet, writer and lecturer. He lives in Dublin. Heaney has received the Nobel Prize in Literature , the Golden Wreath of Poetry , T. S. Eliot Prize and two Whitbread prizes...

, Tony Hoagland

Tony Hoagland

Anthony Dey Hoagland is an American poet and writer. His poetry collection 2003, What Narcissism Means to Me, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Other honors include two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, a 2000 Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry, and a...

, Louis B. Jones

Louis B. Jones

Louis B. Jones is an American author and screenwriter. He has written three novels, all of which have been named New York Times Notable Books of their respective years. His third novel, California's Over, was named the LA Times' Best Book of the Year in 1997. He is an NEA fellow and a fellow of the...

, A. L. Kennedy

A. L. Kennedy

Alison Louise Kennedy is a Scottish writer of novels, short stories and non-fiction. She is known for a characteristically dark tone, a blending of realism and fantasy, and for her serious approach to her work...

, August Kleinzahler

August Kleinzahler

-Life and career:Until he was 11, he went to school in Fort Lee, New Jersey, where he grew up. He then commuted to the Horace Mann School in the Bronx, graduating in 1967. He wrote poetry from this time, inspired by Keats and Kenneth Rexroth translations, among other works...

, Gideon Lewis-Kraus, Philip Levine

Philip Levine (poet)

Philip Levine is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet best known for his poems about working-class Detroit. He taught for over thirty years at the English Department of California State University, Fresno and held teaching positions at other universities as well...

, Phillip Lopate

Phillip Lopate

Doctor Phillip Lopate is an American film critic, essayist, fiction writer, poet, and teacher. He is the younger brother of radio host Leonard Lopate.-Early life and education:...

, David Mamet

David Mamet

David Alan Mamet is an American playwright, essayist, screenwriter and film director.Best known as a playwright, Mamet won a Pulitzer Prize and received a Tony nomination for Glengarry Glen Ross . He also received a Tony nomination for Speed-the-Plow . As a screenwriter, he received Oscar...

, Greil Marcus

Greil Marcus

Greil Marcus is an American author, music journalist and cultural critic. He is notable for producing scholarly and literary essays that place rock music in a much broader framework of culture and politics than is customary in pop music journalism.-Life and career:Marcus was born in San Francisco...

, Paul Muldoon

Paul Muldoon

Paul Muldoon is an Irish poet. He has published over thirty collections and won a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the T. S. Eliot Prize. He held the post of Oxford Professor of Poetry from 1999 - 2004. At Princeton University he is both the Howard G. B. Clark ’21 Professor in the Humanities and...

, Sigrid Nunez

Sigrid Nunez

-Biography:Sigrid Nunez is the daughter of a Chinese-Panamanian father and a German mother. She was born and raised in New York City. She received her BA from Barnard College and her MFA from Columbia University. After finishing school she worked for a time as an editorial assistant at The New York...

, Kenzaburo Oe

Kenzaburo Oe

is a Japanese author and a major figure in contemporary Japanese literature. His works, strongly influenced by French and American literature and literary theory, deal with political, social and philosophical issues including nuclear weapons, social non-conformism and existentialism.Ōe was awarded...

, Cynthia Ozick

Cynthia Ozick

Cynthia Ozick is an American short story writer, novelist, and essayist. She is the niece of the Hebraist Abraham Regelson.-Background:Cynthia Shoshana Ozick was born in New York City, the second of two children...

, Dale Peck

Dale Peck

Dale Peck is an American novelist, critic, and columnist. His 2009 novel, Sprout, won the Lambda Literary Award for LGBT Children's/Young Adult literature, and was a finalist for the Stonewall Book Award in the Children's and Young Adult Literature category.-Biography:Peck was raised in Kansas,...

, Adam Phillips

Adam Phillips

Adam Phillips may refer to:*Adam Phillips *Adam Phillips *Adam Phillips...

, Robert Pinsky

Robert Pinsky

Robert Pinsky is an American poet, essayist, literary critic, and translator. From 1997 to 2000, he served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. Pinsky is the author of nineteen books, most of which are collections of his own poetry...

, Kay Ryan

Kay Ryan

Kay Ryan is an American poet and educator. She has published seven volumes of poetry and an anthology of selected and new poems. Ryan was the sixteenth United States Poet Laureate, from 2008 to 2010...

, Oliver Sacks

Oliver Sacks

Oliver Wolf Sacks, CBE , is a British neurologist and psychologist residing in New York City. He is a professor of neurology and psychiatry at Columbia University, where he also holds the position of Columbia Artist...

, Luc Sante

Luc Sante

-Early life:Born in Verviers, Belgium, Sante emigrated to the United States in the early 1960s. He attended school in New York City, first at Regis High School in Manhattan and then at Columbia University.-Writing:...

, Mark Sarvas

Mark Sarvas

Mark Sarvas is an American novelist, book reviewer, and blogger living in Los Angeles. He is the host of the literary blog and author of the novel Harry, Revised...

, Elizabeth Tallent

Elizabeth Tallent

Elizabeth Tallent is an American fiction writer.-Life:Tallent's short stories have been published in literary magazines and journals such as The New Yorker, Esquire, Harper's Magazine, The Threepenny Review, and North American Review, and her stories have been reprinted in the O...

, Amy Tan

Amy Tan

Amy Tan is an American writer whose works explore mother-daughter relationships. Her most well-known work is The Joy Luck Club, which has been translated into 35 languages...

, James Tate

James Tate

James Tate may refer to:* James Tate , Headmaster of Richmond School 1796–1833)* James "Honest Dick" Tate , State Treasurer of Kentucky...

, Tony Tulathimutte

Tony Tulathimutte

Tony Tulathimutte is an American fiction writer. His short story "Scenes from the Life of the Only Girl in Water Shield, Alaska" received an O. Henry Award in 2008...

, Gore Vidal

Gore Vidal

Gore Vidal is an American author, playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and political activist. His third novel, The City and the Pillar , outraged mainstream critics as one of the first major American novels to feature unambiguous homosexuality...

, Lawrence Weschler

Lawrence Weschler

Lawrence Weschler is an author of works of creative nonfiction.A graduate of Cowell College of the University of California, Santa Cruz , Weschler was for over twenty years a staff writer at The New Yorker, where his work shuttled between political tragedies and cultural comedies...

, Rachel Wetzsteon

Rachel Wetzsteon

-Life:Born in New York City, New York, the daughter of editor Ross Wetzsteon , she graduated from Yale University in 1989, where she studied with Marie Borroff, and John Hollander....

, Frederick Wiseman

Frederick Wiseman

Frederick Wiseman is an American documentary filmmaker. He came to documentary filmmaking after first being trained as a lawyer...

, Dean Young

Dean Young (poet)

Dean Young is a contemporary American poet in the poetic lineage of John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, and Kenneth Koch. Often cited as a second-generation New York School poet, Young also derives influence and inspiration from the work of André Breton, Paul Éluard, and the other French Surrealist poets,...

, and Adam Zagajewski

Adam Zagajewski

Adam Zagajewski is a Polish poet, novelist, translator and essayist.In 1982 he emigrated to Paris, but in 2002 he returned to Poland, and resides in Kraków. His poem "Try To Praise The Mutilated World", printed in The New Yorker, became famous after the 11 September attacks...

.

The Threepenny Review has published more literary work of Javier Marías

Javier Marías

Javier Marías is a Spanish novelist. He is also a translator and columnist.-Life:Javier Marías was born in Madrid. His father was the philosopher Julián Marías, who was briefly imprisoned and then banned from teaching for opposing Franco...

 than any other American magazine. Cover art, often selected from works at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is a modern art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art and was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th century art...

, has run the gamut from Edward Hopper

Edward Hopper

Edward Hopper was a prominent American realist painter and printmaker. While most popularly known for his oil paintings, he was equally proficient as a watercolorist and printmaker in etching...

 to W. Eugene Smith

W. Eugene Smith

William Eugene Smith was an American photojournalist known for his refusal to compromise professional standards and his brutally vivid World War II photographs.- Life and work :...

.

Awards

Pieces from the magazine have been selected for inclusion in the Best American Poetry, Best American Travel Writing

The Best American Travel Writing

The Best American Travel Writing is a yearly anthology of travel literature published in United States magazines. It was started in 2000 as part of The Best American Series published by Houghton Mifflin...

, Best American Essays

The Best American Essays

The Best American Essays is a yearly anthology of magazine articles published in the United States. It was started in 1986 and is now part of The Best American Series published by Houghton Mifflin...

, and The O. Henry Prize Stories anthologies.

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.

See also

• List of literary magazines
• Utne Reader
• San Francisco Review of Books
  San Francisco Review of Books
  San Francisco Review of Books was a book review periodical published from the mid-1970s to 1997 in the Bay Area. Founding editor-publisher Ronald Nowicki launched his publication April 1975, a time when the San Francisco Chronicle depended on the wire services for its reviews...
  
  

External links

• The Threepenny Review
• The Lesser Blog