Welcome to the Sewanee Review


We invite you to take your rightful place in history
with America's oldest continuously published
literary quarterly in your hands.


Read our exclusive interview with
Dawn Potter, author of Tracing Paradise: Two Years in Harmony with John Milton.


Take hold of the direct literary line to Flannery O’Connor, Robert Penn Warren, Hart Crane, Anne Sexton, Harry Crews, and Fred Chappell—not to mention, Andre Dubus and Cormac McCarthy, whose first stories were published in the Sewanee Review and James Dickey, whose poetry was first published by us in 1951. At 117 years young, we are old school in the best way possible. We have been honored by time, and in return we strive to be traditional without being quaint and innovative without being mutinous.

Sewanee Sesquicentennial History Project Features George Core's History of the Sewanee Review.

The success of a magazine in America is judged by its survival. Published since 1892 by the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, the Sewanee Review has never missed an issue . . . so you be the judge . . . please! Take a look, or take another look, beneath the pale blue cover; we think you'll be surprised. In issues that cohere around broad themes like Southern letters, the literature of war, and the modern Catholic novel (to name a few), the editor has cultivated a distinguished group of writers whose work regularly appears in this storied publication, as well as a few talented newcomers in each issue. In fact, several years ago Kathryn Starbuck's poetry was published for the first time in our pages; and fourteen newcomers appear in the issues of 2008. The Sewanee Review is unique in the field of letters for its rich tradition of excellence in poetry, fiction, and memoir, and for its dedication to straightforward, no-nonsense literary criticism.

"There was the most extraordinary sight: scrolls and sheets of green and blue and rose-colored light falling across the sky. Were you one of us? Do you remember?"

—Mairi MacInnes, “Arcady and After” from the summer issue