A year into the pandemic we each continue to find our own ways of understanding and grappling with the nature of isolation, seeking self-care and coping strategies in these Groundhog Days of staying in, staying safe, staying sane. Many of us are, not surprisingly, finding comfort and companionship in reading. Among the joys of literature […]
Read More - Colorado Review Spring 2021
As in every fall issue since 2004, we are delighted to present the winner of the Nelligan Prize for Short Fiction. This year’s winning story is “The German Woman,” by Josie Sigler Sibara. Lori Ostlund, who selected it, writes that it is “a beautifully written story—at times stark, at others lyrical—a story that provides a […]
Read More - Colorado Review Fall/Winter 2020
Photo by Phil Roeder when you lift your toe, the fabric falls, folds. the ropes dance. your hair drags along the forest floor and my comb follows. tonight, we’re lost at sea, hidden in plain sight. let’s not worry our wishes into birds or close off a corner of the room. let’s have a thicker […]
Read More - Understory
Photo by John Morton Outside, a tree, dried out & skeletal, moans. Dead in spring. The roots can’t find water. It’s May, the city isn’t greening anymore, & trees are sick of the sun. Say the sky’s the sickblue of hospital walls. Say her name as she coughs & gags in predawn heat. She tried […]
Read More - Aubade for the Anthropocene
Photo by Intermountain Forest Service, USDA Region 4 Photography Pennock Trail There was a boy who was a boy who was a tree who was a river and a rock and a cloud. Who was a nothing more than a something who wanted to be nothing but a flash under sky over field. Who wanted […]
Read More - Mile 57—
The new Żaba grew to be an ugly dog: disproportional, with long, thin legs and big, elongated paws that contrasted with an average-sized body.
Read More - Dog Years
If ten men stand by, the crime they witness must be multiplied by a hundred, because if they don’t stop each other, who will ever stop them?
Read More - The German Woman
It surely comes as no surprise that the content of each issue of Colorado Review is selected months, sometimes a year or more, before publication. But it’s remarkable how the stories, poems, and essays often strike us somewhat differently as we prepare to send an issue to the printer, how their resonance changes in relation […]
Read More - Colorado Review Summer 2020
As we prepare this issue, it happens to be the time of year for envisioning change. And in that spirit, we’re trying something new: after many years of arranging our issues by genre, we’re mixing things up, interspersing the stories, poems, and essays throughout the magazine. We hope that this new layout gives readers a different, […]
Read More - Colorado Review Spring 2020
In every fall issue we celebrate and publish the winning story from the year’s Nelligan Prize for Short Fiction, established to honor the memory of writer, scholar, and literary editor Liza Nelligan, an alumna of Colorado State University’s English Department. In this issue, we are delighted to present the prize’s sixteenth winner, Bryna Cofrin-Shaw’s “Loss […]
Read More - Colorado Review Fall/Winter 2019