Foreword

Foreword Literary magazines, like people, may fall prey to any of several destructive obsessions. In the thousands of decisions that define their identity, they may veer off course with overconcern about audience development, appearance and format, "consistency of voice" (which, over time, may militate against consistency of quality), or, alas, the not insignificant matter of sheer survival. As the Missouri Review heads toward its ninth year, we would like to reconfirm our belief that the central role of a good literary magazine is to publish its authors. I want to say a word about the most basic side of that large infinitive—"to publish" its authors by affording them as much recognition as they deserve. Recognition is, first and most basically, payment. A great deal of nonsense is written about the differences between little magazines and commercial ones. It is often said but seldom believed, for example, that little magazines, generically, publish higher quality work than the slicks, or that the "glory" is what matters in literary publication, payment of authors being almost beside the point. We believe that we should pay our authors as well as we can. Rather than conveniently scorning the standard of payment in commercial magazine publishing, we believe that a good literary magazine should look to it as a model to be aspired to. When financial sacrifices are made, when leaps of faith are taken, we should always think first about our authors. This should be reflected in regular payment for contributors as well as awards. In the last three years, the Missouri Review has initiated several new kinds of encouragement and support for its writers. The Peden Prize in fiction (supported by a grant from the First National Bank in Columbia, Missouri) is a one-thousand-dollar award to the best short story of the year. The McAfee Discovery Feature is a one-hundred-twenty-fivedollar award, given more than once a year, to a poet with no previously published volume of work. (In this issue, we introduce our second Discovery poet, Carol Potter). In addition, the editors are continuously pushing to make regular contributor payments more substantial. In this issue, we are happy to announce that the Missouri Review is making an increased commitment to the essay, and that we are offering, in the future, five hundred dollars for the lead essay of each issue. Copies of the Missouri Review are sent to agents and book and magazine editors, in order to promote the work of our authors in the larger publishing community. Frequently we cooperate with other editors—on both the giving and receiving end—in trying to find the right place for good writing. Literary magazines have the good fortune to be relatively unencumbered by the stresses of competition and profitmaking. As much as possible, we should turn this freedom to the profit of those who comprise our substance—our authors. SM "„aw o/ caü^£