The Southwest Review is a literary journal published quarterly, based on the Southern Methodist University

Southern Methodist University

Southern Methodist University is a private university in Dallas, Texas, United States. Founded in 1911 by the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, SMU operates campuses in Dallas, Plano, and Taos, New Mexico. SMU is owned by the South Central Jurisdiction of the United Methodist Church...

 campus in Dallas, Texas

Dallas, Texas

Dallas is the third-largest city in Texas and the ninth-largest in the United States. The Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex is the largest metropolitan area in the South and fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States...

. It is the third oldest literary quarterly in the United States of America (US). The current editor-in-chief is Willard Spiegelman.

The journal was formerly known as the Texas Review, and was started in 1915 at the University of Texas. In 1924 the magazine was transferred to SMU

Southern Methodist University

Southern Methodist University is a private university in Dallas, Texas, United States. Founded in 1911 by the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, SMU operates campuses in Dallas, Plano, and Taos, New Mexico. SMU is owned by the South Central Jurisdiction of the United Methodist Church...

 by Jay B. Hubbell and George Bond, who served as joint editors until 1927.

Famous contributors include: Quentin Bell

Quentin Bell

Quentin Claudian Stephen Bell was an English art historian and author.Bell was the son of Clive Bell and Vanessa Bell , and the nephew of Virginia Woolf . He was educated in London and at the Quaker Leighton Park School.Principally an artist, as a potter, he was drawn to academia...

, Amy Clampitt

Amy Clampitt

-Life:Amy Clampitt was born on June 15, 1920 of Quaker parents, and brought up in New Providence, Iowa. In the American Academy of Arts and Letters and at nearby Grinnell College she began a study of English literature that eventually led her to poetry. She graduated from Grinnell College, and from...

, Margaret Drabble, Natalia Ginzburg

Natalia Ginzburg

Natalia Ginzburg née Levi was an award-winning Italian author whose work explored family relationships, politics during and after the Fascist years and World War II, and philosophy. She wrote novels, short stories and essays, for which she received the Strega Prize and Bagutta Prize...

, James Merrill

James Merrill

James Ingram Merrill was an American poet whose awards include the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Divine Comedies...

, Iris Murdoch

Iris Murdoch

Dame Iris Murdoch DBE was an Irish-born British author and philosopher, best known for her novels about political and social questions of good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious...

, Howard Nemerov

Howard Nemerov

Howard Nemerov was an American poet. He was twice appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1963 to 1964, and again from 1988 to 1990. He received the National Book Award, Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and Bollingen Prize for The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov...

, Edmund White

Edmund White

Edmund Valentine White III is an American author and literary critic. He is a member of the faculty of Princeton University's Program in Creative Writing.- Life and work :...

, Maxim Gorky

Maxim Gorky

Alexei Maximovich Peshkov , primarily known as Maxim Gorky , was a Russian and Soviet author, a founder of the Socialist Realism literary method and a political activist.-Early years:...

, Cleanth Brooks

Cleanth Brooks

Cleanth Brooks was an influential American literary critic and professor. He is best known for his contributions to New Criticism in the mid-twentieth century and for revolutionizing the teaching of poetry in American higher education...

, and Robert Penn Warren

Robert Penn Warren

Robert Penn Warren was an American poet, novelist, and literary critic and was one of the founders of New Criticism. He was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He founded the influential literary journal The Southern Review with Cleanth Brooks in 1935...

.

More recent contributors of note include: Ann Harleman, Thomas Beller

Thomas Beller

Thomas Beller is an American author and editor.- Life :Born and raised in New York, Beller has remained a resident of his native city, which often features in his stories. He is the son of documentary filmmaker Hava Kohav Beller...

, Ben Fountain

Ben Fountain

Ben Fountain is an American fiction writer currently living in Dallas, Texas.-Pre-writing career:Fountain earned a B.A. in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1980, and a law degree from the Duke University School of Law in 1984...

, Gerald Duff, and Jacob M. Appel

Jacob M. Appel

Jacob M. Appel is an American author, bioethicist and social critic. He is best known for his short stories, his work as a playwright, and his writing in the fields of reproductive ethics, organ donation, neuroethics and euthanasia....

.

Honors and awards

• Ann Harleman's story, Meanwhile, received an O. Henry Award
  O. Henry Award
  The O. Henry Award is the only yearly award given to short stories of exceptional merit. The award is named after the American master of the form, O. Henry....
  
   in 2003.
• Ben Fountain's story, Fantasy for Eleven Fingers, won an O. Henry Award
  O. Henry Award
  The O. Henry Award is the only yearly award given to short stories of exceptional merit. The award is named after the American master of the form, O. Henry....
  
   in 2005.
• Barbara Moss Klein's story, Little Edens, was short-listed for the O. Henry Award
  O. Henry Award
  The O. Henry Award is the only yearly award given to short stories of exceptional merit. The award is named after the American master of the form, O. Henry....
  
  in 2005.
• Merritt Tuck story, Suck It, was included in Best New Stories from the South 2008.
• Jacob Appel's story, Rods and Cones, was short-listed for Best American Nonrequired Reading in 2008.