Next up on our roadtrip: South Dakota! You might know S.D. for Mount Rushmore, the Badlands or the Corn Palace, but we know it as the home to these terrific literary magazines. Rebecca Paredes gives us a guided tour of South Dakota’s premier publications below.
On this leg of our literary road trip, we’re stopping in the Mount Rushmore State: the home of notable authors such as Laura Ingalls Wilder and Vine Deloria, Jr., the South Dakota Festival of Books, and literary organizations with a long history of supporting regional work. Here’s a small-but-mighty list of active publishers of fiction in the state.
Oakwood
Launched in 1975, Oakwood is a literary magazine that “seeks to publish and foster the work of the extended creative community of the Northern Great Plains.” To that end, contributors must live or have lived in South Dakota or the adjoining states: Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Wyoming. Oakwood is published annually at South Dakota State University.
South Dakota Review
Founded in 1963, South Dakota Review is a quarterly print journal published at the University of South Dakota (USD). The journal supports work by contemporary writers writing from or about the American West, and the editors welcome works by “American Indian writers, writers addressing the complexities and contradictions of the ‘New West,’ and writers exploring themes of landscape, place, and/or ecocriticism in surprising and innovative ways.”
Red Coyote Journal
The USD’s Department of English houses the Vermillion Literary Project (VLP), a student literary and creative writing organization. Each year, the VLP publishes Red Coyote Journal—a print publication that features contributions from members of the USD community, as well as writers “across the Midwest, and around the world.”
by Rebecca Paredes