Lincoln, (Neb.) - Sept. 26, 2001 - Founded at the University of Nebraska in 1926, Prairie Schooner was just one of hundreds of "little magazines" that sprang up in the first half of the 20th century. Most of those magazines folded over the years, but Prairie Schooner can claim the distinction of being the oldest continually published literary magazine west of the Mississippi. Prairie Schooner will celebrate its 75th anniversary with an international conference in Lincoln Oct. 11-13.
The conference at the Cornhusker Hotel will feature a fiction reading by Nobel Prize nominee and Oprah's Book Club author Joyce Carol Oates, as well as more than 80 other scholars, critics and writers who will give readings and presentations. Hilda Raz, current editor-in-chief of Prairie Schooner, says the choice of Oates as keynote speaker was obvious.
Oates' reading will be at 8 p.m. Oct. 13. The reading is free and open to the public and will be followed by a book signing.
"When I first came to the magazine, a new writer, J.C. Oates, was sending work of astonishing quality and daring and we were publishing it. Joyce Carol Oates' stellar career represents the vigor and ambition of contemporary writing and we wanted to bring her to Lincoln to help us celebrate our 75th birthday. All 80 writers coming to Lincoln bring talent, enthusiasm and commitment to Prairie Schooner."
Prairie Schooner was founded by Lowry C. Wimberly, a popular professor of English at the university, and a collection of students known as "Wimberly's Boys," who had been meeting in Wimberly's living room every Sunday to discuss writing and literature.
At various times, this collection of "boys" included cult novelist and Oscar-winning screenwriter Jim Thompson, poet and artist Weldon Kees, journalists Edward R. Murrow and Edward Stanley, and author Mari Sandoz. "(Sandoz) may have been one of the boys," said Raz, "but she was a woman of talent and ambition, and a major supporter of Prairie Schooner in its first decades."
Prairie Schooner was begun in part because this talented collection of Nebraska intellectuals felt somewhat snubbed by the New York publishing world, but after only a few years, Prairie Schooner was wholeheartedly welcomed and pursued by editors at the major houses. Doubleday, Scribner's, and Little, Brown all solicited Prairie Schooner authors, and Alfred Knopf himself wrote a letter to Wimberly praising the magazine.
However, at the tail end of Prohibition, Wimberly, as well as Prairie Schooner's associate editor and business manager were thrown in jail by agents of "Three Gun" Howard Wilson, deputy federal prohibition administrator of Nebraska, after being caught at a student dance with liquor. According to Robert E. Knoll, author of the book "Prairie University," Wimberly was suspended without pay in what was called a "frame-up, or at the very least a double cross." After a campus uproar, Prairie Schooner continued, and Wimberly stayed on as editor for two more decades.
Prairie Schooner's second editor, Pulitzer Prize-winner Karl Shapiro, did leave the magazine following a scandal. In 1963, a copy editor had complained about the "vulgar language" of a story Shapiro intended to publish, and the administration stepped in to prevent its publication. Incensed, Shapiro not only resigned, but also read the story over Nebraska's public radio station in protest.
Though the past three decades have seemed calm in contrast, Prairie Schooner has maintained its consistency of excellence and its commitment to publishing the best writing by authors both established and new. The list of notable authors published in Prairie Schooner could go on and on: Nobel laureate Octavio Paz, Pulitzer Prize winners such as Rita Dove and Stephen Dunn, National Book Award winners Marilyn Hacker and Joyce Carol Oates, best-selling novelists Kent Haruf, Sherman Alexie, and Richard Russo, and Oprah's Book Club authors Ursula Hegi, Bret Lott and A. Manette Ansay, as well as the names seen every year on all the "best of" prize volumes for fiction, poetry, and nonfiction.
Prairie Schooner also has published special issues on literature from China, Japan, Germany, Australia, Canada, an issue of Czech and Slovak literatures published on the eve of the Velvet Revolution, a special Nebraska issue which went through two printings, a Latina/Latino issue, and a Jewish American issue reprinted as an anthology by the University of Nebraska Press.
Raz says this diversity in publishing will also be represented at the
conference through the rich multiculturalism of its contemporary artists.
For more information about Prairie Schooner or the Prairie Schooner 75th
Anniversary Conference and Celebration, contact Prairie Schooner at (402)
472-0495 or check out the web site
(http://www.unl.edu/schooner/psmain.htm).
For questions regarding these releases, contact:
tsimons1@unl.edu
(402) 472-8514, Fax: (402) 472-7825