Words for Words

by Cole Konopka, Colorado Review Editorial Assistant In one of the many warnings I received as an undergraduate writer, a poet and teacher once broke down the hourly wage of writing (and editing) a poem for eventual publication. The $50 payment spread itself over many hours, until minimum wage seemed idealistic to hope for. Somehow […]

The Participation Prize

by Abigail Kerstetter, Colorado Review Associate Editor It’s always a strange thing, spending a weekend in devotion to writing, in the company of thousands of other writers, publishers, and general lovers of words at various stages of their careers, some well-seasoned in navigating what can quickly become a hall of mirrors, others just entering this […]

A Constraint to Free Me

by Andrew Mangan, Associate Editor, Colorado Review A year ago, I was deluded. I’d persuaded myself to believe that I was a diverse reader, since my ten favorite authors then were a demographic scattershot: Lorrie Moore, Junot Díaz, ZZ Packer, Jhumpa Lahiri, Ben Marcus, Ottessa Moshfegh, Yiyun Li, Donald Antrim, Nam Le, Tobias Wolff (in […]

The Undergraduate Literary Journal: A Bridge to Becoming a Writer

by Emily Harnden, Colorado Review Editorial Assistant The first short story I ever fell in love with, the kind of love that happens only once or twice when you are young and hopeful and vulnerable to getting your heart punctured, was, predictably, “How to Become a Writer,” by Lorrie Moore. That whip-smart opening—“First, try to […]