The Limberlost Review (2019 Edition)

Limberlost Press announces publication of The Limberlost Review: A Literary Anthology of the Mountain West edited by Rick and Rosemary Ardinger. The new 280-page anthology revives a literary journal of the 1970s and 1980s and features poetry, fiction essays, artwork, translations, and other personal writing by some award-winning contributors.

Though the first issue of the Review appeared in 1976 as a literary magazine of the small press movement, Limberlost Press since the late-1980s has been producing in lieu of the Review hand-sewn, letterpress printed, limited editions of poetry by individual writers such as Jim Harrison, John Updike, Allen Ginsberg, Sherman Alexie, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, as well as such noteworthy poets from Idaho and the West as Bill Studebaker, Margaret Aho, Gino Sky, Judith Root, Chuck Guilford, Robert Wrigley, Kim Stafford, Nancy Takacs, and many others.

Rick Ardinger says that while Limberlost Press will continue to publish books by individual writers, it was time to revive The Limberlost Review as an occasional journal.

“The convener in us thinks it’s just time,” Ardinger writes in the Introduction. “Despite dramatic growth and proliferation of online literary journals throughout the world, there are fewer and fewer print venues for writers in the Mountain West, and we miss the creative stir that comes from creating the mix, and bringing together the work of writers and artists in a print journal that can be passed around, talked about, and read in the bathtub.”

This edition of the revived Review features contributions by more than three dozen writers and artists, including an interview with Idaho novelist Clay Morgan; translations by BSU’s Mac Test of a half-dozen poems by award-winning Chilean poet Raúl Zurita; a brief, reflective history of Limberlost Press, and a colorful montage of artwork, photos, and book covers promoting the works of many writers.

Highlights include writers Robert Wrigley, Chuck Guilford, Brandon Schrand, Jim Hepworth, and Shaun T. Griffin all reflecting on why we re-read works by Richard Hugo, Willa Cather, Cormac McCarthy, Norman Maclean, and Donald Hall.

It features new fiction by Mary Clearman Blew, Jim Heynen, Gary Gildner, and Peter Anderson; poetry by Bill Studebaker, Star Coulbrooke, Gary Holthaus, Tom Bennick, Greg Keeler, Gino Sky, Larry Goodell, Bethany Schultz Hurst, Annie Lampman, Alan Minskoff, Jan Minich, Nancy Takacs, Diane Raptosh, Bill Johnson, Judy McConnell Steele, Martin Vest; essays/nonfiction by Kim Stafford, John Rember, Joy Passanante, and Stephen Richardson; and artwork by Dennis and Jinny DeFoggi, Greg Keeler, and Jackie Elo.

See "Reviving The Limberlost Review" in Boise Weekly

Listen to a KBSU interview with Rick Ardinger about The Limberlost Review