About Prairie Schooner

Prairie Schooner, an international literary magazine, publishes poetry, short fiction, and essays from around the world. In recent years, the quarterly has included authors from six of the seven continents (with subscribers in just as many). Historically, it is one of the nation’s five oldest quarterlies and will celebrate its centennial with the Spring 2027 issue. A project of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln English Department since its debut in 1927, Prairie Schooner is one of UNL’s most important cultural exports and research legacies. Not only has it published some of modern literature’s most notable writers, but it has also provided opportunities for generations of students to gain first-hand editorial experience.

The list of the thousands of authors who’ve published in Prairie Schooner includes multiple Pulitzer and Nobel prize winners, as well as winners of the MacArthur “genius” grant, the PEN Awards, the National Book Awards, Guggenheim fellowships, National Book Critics Circle awards, and other recognitions. Work that originated in Prairie Schooner has gone on to be published in hundreds of award-winning books.

Some of the esteemed authors who have published in the journal over the last century include Julia Alvarez, Kurt Andersen, Toni Cade Bambara, Jorge Luis Borges, Charles Bukowski, Truman Capote, Lan Samantha Chang, Natalie Diaz, Rita Dove, Cornelius Eady, Louise Erdrich, Ellen Gilchrist, Jon Hassler, Terrance Hayes, Linda Hogan, Ted Kooser, Madeline L’Engle, Ada Limón, Federico García Lorca, Gregory Maguire, Terese Marie Mailhot, Eileen Myles, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Sigrid Nunez, Alissa Nutting, Joyce Carol Oates, Sharon Olds, Carol Simmons Oles, Mary Oliver, Romeo Oriogun, Cynthia Ozick, Octavio Paz, Torrey Peters, Naomi Shihab-Nye, Danez Smith, Brandon Som, Deborah Taffa, Eudora Welty, Joy Williams, and Tennessee Williams.

Prairie Schooner partners with the University of Nebraska Press for the annual Raz/Shumaker Book Prize, which will celebrate 25 years of publishing in 2028. Winners of the prize have gone on to receive recognition from the National Book Awards, the PEN Awards, and others.

In 2001, Glenna Luschei, a distinguished poet and publisher in her own right, endowed Prairie Schooner in perpetuity with the Glenna Luschei Fund for Excellence at Prairie Schooner at the University of Nebraska Foundation. Every year we offer the Glenna Luschei Awards for work published in Prairie Schooner, alongside many other awards, including those named for previous Prairie Schooner editors-in-chief Hugh Luke and Bernice Slote and associate editors Virginia Faulkner and Edward Stanley. We also offer the $2,000 Lawrence Foundation Award for the best short story in PS, as well as the Jane Geske and Strousse Awards. The Ervin and Loretta Krause Freedom of Expression Award recognizes work by writers-at-risk.

Timothy Schaffert is the seventh editor of the journal, and the third to serve as the Glenna Luschei Endowed Editor in Chief, after Hilda Raz and Kwame Dawes. Schaffert has been on the creative writing faculty of UNL since 2006 and stepped into the role of editor in chief in June of 2025. He has published seven novels, and his work has been a USA Today and American Booksellers Association bestseller, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, an Oprah 2.0 Book Club Book of the Week, a winner of the Nebraska Book Award, and recommended by People magazine, the Washington Post, NPR’s Morning Edition, NBC New York, LA Times, and Good Housekeeping, among others, and has received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and BookPage. Prairie Schooner published his first short story, “Sounds from the Courtyard,” in 1993.