Intended to be a “living notebook” by founder Bradford Morrow, Conjunctions is widely considered one of the most influential, adventurous literary journals in America, publishing the debuts or early works by a dazzling array of writers – including David Foster Wallace, William T. Vollmann, Mary Caponegro, Ben Marcus, Peter Cole, Rick Moody, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Diane Williams, Jim Crace, Peter Gizzi, Shelley Jackson, Brian Evenson, Robert Antoni, Jonathan Safran Foer and others. Venerated masters such as William H. Gass, John Barth, Richard Powers, Joyce Carol Oates, Peter Straub, the late Thomas Bernhard, Susan Sontag, and Roberto Bolaño, and numerous others, are also among the journal’s many cutting-edge authors.

 

Having celebrated its fortieth anniversary, Conjunctions has carved a unique place in American, indeed international, letters, garnering praise as one of contemporary literature’s premiere publishing venues.

 

The Village Voice has called Conjunctions “A must read.” Novelist Eli Gottlieb wrote in Elle that it is “Arguably the most distinguished journal of prose and poetry in America.” The Washington Post hailed Conjunctions as “A showplace for some of the most exciting and demanding writers now at work.” But perhaps it is The Paris Review’s legendary editor George Plimpton’s early words of praise that resonate even now with heartfelt generosity when in the early 1990s he proclaimed Conjunctions “The most interesting and superbly edited literary journal founded in the last decade.”

 

In 2007, Morrow was awarded the prestigious PEN/Nora Magid Award for excellence in editing a literary journal, and he was the recipient of the 2022 Lord Nose Award, given in recognition of a lifetime of superlative work in literary publishing.