The following post is written by Reamy Jansen on behalf of The Bloomsbury Review. If you’re not familiar with The Bloomsbury Review, you’re missing one of the most comprehensive review publications in print today. DA

—

The Bloomsbury Review of Books, a bi-monthly publication begun by its founding editor, Tom Auer, from a little newsletter for frequenters of Bloomsbury Books, is in the sort of crisis that most of us are well familiar with—we need money, and we needs it now. (This is money owed us, by the way, but we don’t know when they will be able to come up with it.)

Blooms, as we often call it, may be situated in the tiniest of editorial suites at 1553 Platte St. in Denver, but its depth and range as a journal of humane letters are without equal. For example, we cover all things West and we also look at the nation by regions, the South, the East, and we also turn our attention to specific times, such as the year 1968. And then there is the magazine’s overall international feel, with its profiles of Orhan Pamuk, Taha Muhammad Ali; reviews of European, Central European, Chinese and Japanese literature). Every issue contains poems selected by our gifted editor, Ray Gonzalez, and the Review now has a new section of original, short nonfiction, “The Out of Bounds Essay.”

We’re also known for excellent interviews of writers such as Maxine Hong Kingston, Li-Young Lee, Al Young, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Martin Espada, David Ray, and Linda Hogan. “To name a few” is easily appended to each preceding list, as we are one step away from our 30th year. We simply have no equals. We are in fact the closest thing to National Public Radio, with a touch of Pacifica. Not for nothing did Wallace Stegner tell us we were, “The best damn book magazine in the West.”

I have been with Bloomsbury for close to seventeen years and have seen it weather a variety of crises: digital crashes, extortionate spikes in rent, broken boilers, re-locations, you name it. Tom, our founder is no longer with us, but it’s his determination and good cheer that drives us in almost all our ventures, including this one. We’ve prevailed before, and I have every hope that we will now.

Help us continue what we’re doing. Of course, the most immediate assistance you can provide is money (checks made out to The Bloomsbury Review of Books). Emptying out your trust fund would be nice, but lots of little donations are more in the spirit of our publication.

Reamy Jansen
Contributing Editor, Bloomsbury Review of Books.