On Valentine’s Day, Milo strings a horse-shaped piñata from the ceiling light in our living room, and I walk by twice before noticing it swaying there. The light is off and the horse is dark, but I am not unobservant. Part of me accepts a horse swinging in my periphery. Milo makes up a real reason for me to go back down the hall and, when I look for the space heater, I find the horse hanging. He dangles from a yellow jump rope, and I am so happy to see him in my house. Milo hands me the stick. “You need,” he says, “to kill a horse.”
About Us
Awards and Praise
Conjunctions was the recipient of a 2020 Whiting Literary Magazine Prize. Administered by the Whiting Foundation, the award honors nonprofit literary magazines for excellence in publishing, advocacy for writers, and a unique contribution to the strength of the overall literary community. (09/16/20)
Conjunctions was named a finalist for the 2018 ASME Award for Fiction for “Euphoria,” by Can Xue, translated by Karen Gernant and Chen Zeping (Spring 2017); “Fractal,” by Joyce Carol Oates (Spring 2017); and “My Uncle Dave Reads Spinoza as His Cookie Business Collapses Due to a Rise in the Price of Sugar in the Dominican Republic,” by Peter Orner (Fall 2017).
Joyce Carol Oates’s story “Undocumented Alien,” from Conjunctions:67, Other Aliens (Fall 2016), received a Pushcart Prize. (05/31/17)
Tethered by Letters and New Pages reviewed Conjunctions:67, Other Aliens (Fall 2016). (01/20/17, 04/18/17)
Poets & Writers profiled contributor Matt Bell’s history of lit mag publication, including Conjunctions. (08/17/16)
Angela Woodward’s “New Technologies of Reading,” from Conjunctions’ weekly online magazine (10/20/15), received a Pushcart Prize. (05/06/16)
VIDA once again acknowledged Conjunctions’ commitment to gender parity in its 2015 survey of women’s contributions to the literary landscape. (03/30/16)
Joyce Carol Oates’s memoir “The Childhood of the Reader” and Joanna Scott’s story “The Knowledge Gallery,” both from Conjunctions:63, Speaking Volumes (Fall 2014), received Pushcart Prizes. (05/01/15)
Guest editor T. C. Boyle selected Julia Elliott’s story “Bride,” from Conjunctions:63, Speaking Volumes (Fall 2014) for the 2015 edition of The Best American Short Stories. (03/26/15)
The 2015 edition of The Best American Experimental Writing features three works from Conjunctions: Lance Olsen’s “Dreamlives of Debris,” from Conjunctions:62, Exile (Spring 2014); Emily Anderson’s “Three Little Novels,” from Conjunctions:63, Speaking Volumes (Fall 2014); and Daniel Nadler’s “From The Lacunae,” also from Conjunctions:63. (02/18/15)
A selection from Emily Anderson’s “Three Little Novels,” published in Conjunctions:63, Speaking Volumes (Fall 2014), was reprinted in Harper’s. (01/01/15)
Russell Banks’s story “A Permanent Member of the Family,” from Conjunctions:61, A Menagerie (Fall 2013), received an O. Henry Award. (08/17/14)
New Pages calls Conjunctions:62, Exile (Spring 2014) “innovative and complicated … Conjunctions is one of those big journals that deserves all the praise that’s heaped upon it. It’s an exciting read, an important collection of some of our country’s greatest writing voices.” (08/14/14)
Vol. 1 Brooklyn calls Gabriel Blackwell’s, Brian Evenson’s, and Peter Straub’s contributions to Conjunctions:62, Exile (Spring 2014) “obsessive … subtle [and] unsettling … genuinely creepy.” (05/16/14)
Frederic Tuten’s story “The Tower” and Yannick Murphy’s story “By the Time You Read This,” both from Conjunctions:60, In Absentia (Spring 2013); and Bennett Sims’s “Fables,” from Conjunctions:61, A Menagerie (Fall 2013), received Pushcart Prizes. (05/12/14)
Piecemeal Review called Adam McOmber’s story “Re’em,” from Conjunctions:61, A Menagerie (Fall 2013) a “mysterious fantasia … compelling.” (04/29/14)
Richard Sieburth’s translation of selections from Charles Baudelaire’s “Poor Belgium,” from Conjunctions:62, Exile (Spring 2014), was reprinted in Harper’s. (04/08/14)
Guest editor Jennifer Egan selected Stephen O’Connor’s story “Next to Nothing,” from Conjunctions:60, In Absentia (Spring 2013), for the 2014 edition of The Best American Short Stories. (03/18/14)
Robert Coover’s story “The Reader,” from Conjunctions:59, Colloquy (Fall 2012), received a Pushcart Prize. (5/13/13)
Conjunctions’ website was selected as one of one hundred essential sites for voracious readers by MastersinEnglish.org. (02/20/13)
A selection from Jonathan Lethem’s “More Little Tales of the Internet,” published in Conjunctions:59, Colloquy (Fall 2012), was reprinted in Harper’s. (01/18/13)
Julia Elliott’s story “Regeneration at Mukti,” from Conjunctions:56, Terra Incognita (Spring 2011), and Karen Russell’s story “A Family Restaurant,” from Conjunctions:57, Kin (Fall 2011) received Pushcart Prizes. (05/01/12)
Peter Straub received the Bram Stoker Award for his novella “The Ballad of Ballard and Sandrine,” from Conjunctions: 56, Terra Incognita (Spring 2011). (04/02/12)
Guest editor Paul Hoover selected G. C. Waldrep’s poem “Selsingrove,” from Conjunctions:56, Terra Incognita (Spring 2011), for the second edition of Norton’s Postmodern American Poetry. (09/02/11)
Praise from the media
“Conjunctions is striking: a rich collection which balances well-known writers with exciting new ones.” —New York Times Book Review
“Conjunctions offers a showplace for some of the most exciting and demanding writers now at work … So rich it demands unhurried consumption.” —Washington Post
“Arguably the most distinguished journal of prose and poetry in America.” —Elle
“A must read.” —Village Voice
“Extraordinary.” —New York Magazine
“Eclectic, innovative, dazzling.” —New York Today
“The last avant-garde literary journal with a wide-bore vision and a still vital role to play in the publishing of younger and unknown writers is, after all, venerable. Conjunctions is still the bellwether of non-aligned excellence.” —Martin Earl
“Conjunctions is a major magazine, possibly the last print journal deserving that designation in America.” —Ron Silliman
“One of the most widely recognized and respected venues for serious poetry, prose, plays, interviews, and criticism.” —Context
Praise from authors and others
“One of the very best literary magazines in North America. If you like good reading that’s also provocative and original, naturally you would be reading Conjunctions.” —Joyce Carol Oates
“Conjunctions is a translation into a multiverse of stories and poems and essays and even weirder hybrid forms, the mutant menagerie of literary fiction. It’s a place to take risks; a home in the universe for creative, dangerous writing; an oasis for weirdness and wonder. I read it with Christmas pleasure.” —Karen Russell
“Bradford Morrow is one of the defining literary editors of his generation, with a unique eye, a capacious and quixotic sense of the new, and an encyclopedic understanding of literature past. Without a doubt, Conjunctions is the best literary magazine in America.” —Rick Moody
“Conjunctions has remained at the vanguard of American literature, and is one of the very few innovative magazines that has remained innovative and constantly on the lookout for new trends in literature—the innovations that become, over time, the traditions. One of the most remarkable things about the magazine is the way that it continues to surprise.” —Brian Evenson
“Conjunctions has a long and truly illustrious history of exemplifying how art documents and comments on our time and culture. Readers have the opportunity to read something unique, found nowhere else. There are few literary magazines comparable in depth and quality to Conjunctions … it fosters the most robustly diverse and wholly imagined literary landscape of our times.” —H. G. Carrillo
“We were astonished to discover that Bradford Morrow has not already won this award, after twenty-five years of editing almost by himself one of our most distinctive and valuable literary magazines. We saw this year as a chance to correct that oversight. The range of writers he publishes (and often discovers) is a sort of Who’s Who of twentieth- and twenty-first-century serious writing, and he’s found a way to keep reinventing it. The fiction, poetry, criticism, drama, and art is sometimes described as ‘experimental,’ but we would also say innovative, daring, indispensable, and beautiful. Our best writers manifestly trust Bradford Morrow with their most ambitious work, and we can think of no higher praise for a literary magazine, or its editor.” —2007 Nora Magid Award for Excellence in Editing a Literary Journal, PEN America judges’ citation