https://www.thesouthernreview.org/issues/detail/Winter-2025/271/

Ring in the new year with the winter issue of The Southern Review. You can take a stand against the passage of time in a new story by Dina Nayeri, or contemplate the possibility of romance in a small, icy town in Chris McCormick’s “You’re Not in Love, You’re in Minnesota.” Go on the strangest of honeymoons across a shifting landscape in a newly translated fable by the French surrealist Noël Devaulx, or consider the redemptive qualities of a thrift store in Samuel Cheney’s new poem “Deseret Industries Thrift.” Former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins returns to The Southern Review’s pages with “The Mouths of Babes,” reckoning with the difficulty implicit in creating art that may feel simple on the surface. New poetry by Barbara Boches, Shara McCallum, and Miho Nonaka, among many others, are also featured. This issue highlights the artwork of Carolyn Zacharias McAdams, whose miniature paintings draw inspiration from the details and precision of doll houses and illuminated manuscripts. We also proudly announce the winners of this year’s Oran Robert Perry Burke and James Olney Awards.

TSR Winter 2025 Audio Gallery

According to [when the names have left them], interruption—like walking and breathing—implies resumption in Meschonnic’s Heraclitean flow of language that lifts us and allows us to recognize each other.

https://www.thesouthernreview.org/issues/detail/Winter-2025/271/

[a day when the sun and the birds are kind], Don Boes and Gabriella Bedetti (Henri Meschonnic)

In “Photographs from the Exclusion Zone,” Ciaran Berry considers photos long kept of the exclusion zone around Chernobyl.

https://www.thesouthernreview.org/issues/detail/Winter-2025/271/

“Photographs from the Exclusion Zone” by Ciaran Berry

In “The Making of Jaws,” Ciaran Berry contemplates a story of how the film was made almost by accident because the shark didn’t work.

https://www.thesouthernreview.org/issues/detail/Winter-2025/271/

“The Making of Jaws” by Ciaran Berry

[when the names have left them], Don Boes and Gabriella Bedetti (Henri Meschonnic)

Like Anne Frank and today’s migrants who “carry their borders in their mouths,” Meschonnic’s experience as enfant caché leaves him cherishing voice in [I have nothing left but my walking].

https://www.thesouthernreview.org/issues/detail/Winter-2025/271/

[I have nothing left but my walking], Don Boes and Gabriella Bedetti (Henri Meschonnic)

In [from the time we were talking], words keep us safe from oblivion and demand a constant improvisation of movement as we engage the space and events of our lives.

https://www.thesouthernreview.org/issues/detail/Winter-2025/271/

[from the time we were talking], Don Boes and Gabriella Bedetti (Henri Meschonnic)

In "Target with Wooden Cubbies for Miscellaneous Ceramics and a Pale-Green Molded Pulp Berry Basket," I'm taking a walk around a city, interacting with its alternating bands of joy and despair.

https://www.thesouthernreview.org/issues/detail/Winter-2025/271/

"Target with Wooden Cubbies for Miscellaneous Ceramics and a Pale-Green Molded Pulp Berry Basket" by Mike Carlson

"Thunder" is part of an extended sonnet sequence in elegy for Kimberly Johnson’s late spouse, the poet Jay Hopler, in which nature’s lament for his death takes the form of a thunderstorm. 

https://www.thesouthernreview.org/issues/detail/Winter-2025/271/

"Thunder" by Kimberly Johnson

Samantha French's painting "Breakthrough" has hung in Ruth Williams’s office for years.

https://www.thesouthernreview.org/issues/detail/Winter-2025/271/

"Breakthrough" by Ruth Williams

In "Solstice,” Ruth Williams is inspired a friend’s off-grid life, the polar opposite of her own.

https://www.thesouthernreview.org/issues/detail/Winter-2025/271/

"Solstice” by Ruth Williams

Rochelle Hurt’s “Alice Neel—Andy Warhol (1970),” a prose poem about portraiture, responds to Alice Neel's portrait of Andy Warhol, painted as he was still recovering from an attempted assassination.

https://www.thesouthernreview.org/issues/detail/Winter-2025/271/

“Alice Neel—Andy Warhol (1970)” by Rochelle Hurt

In Rochelle Hurt’s “Beth Lipman—Bride (2010),” the poet responds to a Beth Lipman piece at the North Carolina Museum of Art that is comprised of many small glass sculptures arranged in the shape of an enormous wedding cake.

https://www.thesouthernreview.org/issues/detail/Winter-2025/271/

“Beth Lipman—Bride (2010)” by Rochelle Hurt

Rochell Hurt’s “Greer Lankton—It’s All About ME, Not You (1996)” responds to the last installation made by Greer Lankton at the Mattress Factory museum in Pittsburgh.

https://www.thesouthernreview.org/issues/detail/Winter-2025/271/

“Greer Lankton—It’s All About ME, Not You (1996)” by Rochelle Hurt - Greer Lankton

A trip to John Adams’s opera with a friend in New York is recalled in Ciaran Berry’s “Doctor Atomic.”  Unfortunately, he forgot his glasses, and so missed a lot of what was happening on stage. A recording of a performance on the Met’s website filled in the gaps.

https://www.thesouthernreview.org/issues/detail/Winter-2025/271/

“Doctor Atomic” by Ciaran Berry

Shara McCallum’s “Parable” is an allegory of motherhood, the nature of the self and selflessness, and faith.

https://www.thesouthernreview.org/issues/detail/Winter-2025/271/

“Parable” by Shara McCallum

Shara McCallum’s ekphrastic sonnet, “The Storm” engages memory, bringing the past and future together through the image of the storm.

“The Storm” by Shara McCallum

Consider how the image permits us to look, slantwise, at the things we fear most in Shara McCallum’s “When the Night Comes in Its Dark Clothes.”

https://www.thesouthernreview.org/issues/detail/Winter-2025/271/

“When the Night Comes in Its Dark Clothes” by Shara McCallum

The Southern Review is one of the nation’s premiere literary journals. Hailed by Time as "superior to any other journal in the English language," we have made literary history since our founding in 1935. We publish a diverse array of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry by the country’s—and the world’s—most respected contemporary writers.

Established at Louisiana State University, The Southern Review immediately became a literary tastemaker. The launch of The Southern Review came about "On a bright Sunday afternoon in late February, 1935," when Louisiana State University’s president drove his black Cadillac to Robert Penn Warren’s house in Baton Rouge to invite him, his wife, and their friend Albert Erskine on a drive to discuss creating a magazine of "distinctive character and quality." Cleanth Brooks and Charles W. Pipkin were consulted; both joined the editorial staff. The Southern Review’s first series ran 1935 to 1942 before closing due to the war. In 1965, the journal was revived under the editorship of Lewis P. Simpson and Donald E. Stanford, who launched the second series to great acclaim. LSU Press became The Southern Review’s publisher in 2011, allowing the journal to undertake new initiatives, such as reaching readers through a digital version in addition to the print quarterly.

TSR Winter 2025 Audio Gallery

The Southern Review/LSUP