Southwest Review
Southwest Review is a quarterly literary journal published by Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. It began in 1915 as the Texas Review, founded by Stark Young of the University of Texas, and is the third-oldest literary quarterly in the United States. In 1924, Jay B. Hubbell moved the magazine to SMU, renamed it the Southwest Review, and shaped its regional focus.
Early editors included Hubbell, George Bond, and Herbert Gambrell. The journal faced financial difficulties, but SMU provided support beginning in 1927. John McGinnis became editor in 1927 and ran the production like a seminar, with senior students and junior colleagues working closely on each issue; the Review grew to nearly 1,000 paid subscribers.
During the Great Depression, the Review was published jointly with Louisiana State University from 1931 to 1935. After 1935, LSU started its own magazine, the Southern Review. The Southwest Review continued under editors such as Donald Day, Allen Maxwell, and Margaret Hartley. In 1984 it appointed its first faculty editor since McGinnis, Willard Spiegelman, who steered the journal toward a more literary, cosmopolitan direction. Spiegelman received the PEN/Nora Magid Award for Magazine Editing in 2005. In 2016 Greg Brownderville became editor and has expanded the journal’s online presence. Over the years, the Southwest Review published work by many famous writers, including Quentin Bell, Amy Clampitt, James Merrill, Iris Murdoch, Maxim Gorky, Cleanth Brooks, Robert Penn Warren, and others.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 06:19 (CET).