Story (magazine)

Story (magazine) was a pioneering American literary magazine established in 1931 that championed short fiction and launched the careers of numerous prominent writers. Founded during the interwar years, it became associated with modernist and realist literary movements and maintained influence through mid‑century revivals and later nonprofit incarnations. The journal is noted for discovering early work by authors who later became central figures in 20th‑century literature and culture.

History

Founded in 1931 by Whit Burnett and Martha Foley in New York City, the magazine emerged amid the cultural ferment of the Great Depression and the Harlem Renaissance, alongside periodicals such as The New Yorker and Partisan Review. Early contributors included figures associated with the Lost Generation like Ernest Hemingway, modernists linked to the Bloomsbury Group and Paris expatriates, and realist writers who later connected to the Beat Generation and the San Francisco Renaissance. In the 1940s Story relocated editorial operations and navigated wartime publishing constraints during World War II while maintaining a roster of emerging writers who would later intersect with the careers of John Steinbeck, Carson McCullers, Flannery O'Connor, and J.D. Salinger. Financial pressures and changing tastes prompted a cessation of the original run in 1961; subsequent revivals in the late 1960s and again in the 1990s attempted to reconnect the publication with contemporary literary scenes tied to the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Harvard, Columbia University, Princeton, and the Library of Congress.

Editorial Vision and Contributors

The magazine’s editorial vision, shaped by Whit Burnett and later editors, emphasized short fiction, narrative economy, and character-driven realism influenced by predecessors and contemporaries such as William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Katherine Anne Porter, and Sherwood Anderson. Story published early work by writers who would become associated with the Nobel Prize, the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the PEN/Faulkner Award, including Tennessee Williams, Sylvia Plath, James Baldwin, Raymond Carver, Alice Munro, Philip Roth, and John Cheever. The magazine fostered connections to institutions like Columbia University School of the Arts, Stanford University, and the University of Iowa, and to workshops led by figures such as Gordon Lish and George Plimpton. Editors cultivated relationships with agents, publishers such as Scribner's and Random House, and reviewers at The New York Times Book Review, The Atlantic, and The Nation, amplifying the profiles of contributors who later wrote for Harper's, Esquire, and The New Republic.

Content and Format

Story concentrated on short stories, flash fiction, and occasional essays and reviews, favoring tight narratives comparable to works in collections by Anton Chekhov, James Joyce, and Antonin Artaud, while embracing realist and modernist techniques associated with Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, and Gertrude Stein. Typical issues featured contributions alongside cover art and photography from artists connected to Alfred Stieglitz, the Armory Show, and the WPA Federal Art Project. The magazine’s format evolved from a small digest to a more polished quarterly, mirroring the production standards of contemporaries such as The Paris Review and Ploughshares. Special issues and themed numbers highlighted regional writing—Southern Gothic voices akin to William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor, Midwestern perspectives like those of Willa Cather and Sherwood Anderson—and international translations in the tradition of Jorge Luis Borges, Marcel Proust, and Gabriel García Márquez.

Reception and Influence

Critical reception ranged from enthusiastic endorsement by literary critics connected to The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, and the Boston Review to skepticism from conservative commentators aligned with the National Review and certain academic circles at Yale and Oxford. Nonetheless, Story’s influence on mid‑century American letters is evident in its role in launching careers later recognized by awards such as the Pulitzer Prize, Nobel Prize in Literature, and the MacArthur Fellowship. The magazine contributed to shaping postwar fiction alongside magazines like The Kenyon Review, The Sewanee Review, and Atlantic Monthly, and it helped establish networks among writers associated with Beat publications such as Evergreen Review and City Lights. Its editorial practices influenced creative writing pedagogy at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Columbia, and Stanford, and its archives have been consulted by researchers at the Modern Language Association and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Publication Details and Legacy

Over multiple incarnations the magazine was published in New York City, Boston, and Columbia, Missouri, appearing in quarterly, biannual, and annual formats under various publishers including Story Press and Story Magazine, Inc. Key surviving archives reside in university special collections and national libraries, informing scholarship at institutions such as the Library of Congress, Harvard Library, and the New York Public Library. The magazine’s legacy persists through anthologies that collect early Story publications—similar in cultural salvage to the Best American Short Stories series—and through the continued prominence of writers whose first magazine appearances were in its pages. Story’s model of editorial discovery and commitment to short fiction continues to be cited by editors of contemporary literary magazines and nonprofit presses, and its historical influence is recognized in retrospectives by PEN America, the Modern Library, and university curricula in creative writing.

Category:American literary magazines Category:Magazines established in 1931 Category:Magazines disestablished in 1961