River Styx (magazine)
| Editor | Richard Newman |
|---|---|
| Categories | Literary magazine |
| Frequency | Triannual |
| Year founded | 1975 |
| Company | Big River Association |
| Country | United States |
| Based in | St. Louis, Missouri |
| Language | English |
| Website | www |
| ISSN | 0149-8851 |
River Styx is a literary journal produced in St. Louis, Missouri published three times a year by the Big River Association.
The magazine has won several Stanley Hanks Prizes, awards from the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines as well as grants and support from the National Endowment for the Arts, Missouri Arts Council, Regional Arts Commission, Missouri Humanities Council, and Arts and Education Council. Its poems and stories have appeared in Best American Poetry and New Stories from the South anthologies, Best New Poets, and The Pushcart Prizes: Best of the Small Presses.
Readings continue to take place each month, at Tavern of Fine Arts on Belt Ave, St Louis, at 7.30pm on the 3rd Monday of the month. Since 1998, River Styx has hosted the Hungry Young Poets series in the summer, featuring upcoming poets under the age of 33.
River Styx was launched in St Louis, Missouri, U.S. in 1975 after earlier poetry readings and musical sessions among enthusiasts had begun in the late 1960s. Young poets read to each other at the apartment of Danny Spell poems of their own and poems by poets they liked. These sessions evolved into the River Styx Poets radio program on St. Louis's first listener sponsored station, KDNA. Regulars on the show included Michael and Jan Castro, Danny Spell, and Marvin Hohman. The radio program lasted from 1970-1973, when KDNA was sold. River Styx Magazine was founded in 1975 with Michael and Jan Castro the editors. The magazine's orientation, along with the reading series at Duff's, which began at the same time, and the River Styx PM series which began in 1981, was multi-cultural. It was among the first magazines and readings series' to go in this direction. Early contributors to the magazine included David Meltzer, Jerome Rothenberg, Maurice Kenny, Joy Harjo, Terri McMillan, Quincy Troupe and others. In the 1980s and 1990s Quincy Troupe joined the editing team. The magazine also featured interviews that have included Ntozake Shange, Gary Snyder, Robert Bly, John Barth, Tony Morrison, and Allen Ginsberg. In 1986 Jan Castro received the Editors Award for River Styx from CCLM (Coordinating Council for Literary Magazines, now CLMP).
River Styx magazine is produced by the literary organization, River Styx (originally Big River Association), incorporated as a not for profit organization in 1975, with Michael Castro as President. The organization also produces readings. The often electrifying readings at Duff's (directed by Michael Castro for over twenty years, with one yer stints by Peter Carlos, Ann Haubrich, Jan Rothschild and Jan Castro), and at the River Styx PM series (directed by Jan Castro at the Missouri Botanical Garden 1979-1986) were instrumental in making River Styx well known locally and nationally. These readings featured music (artists included gospel great Willie Mae Ford Smith in a reading paired with James Baldwin, the World Saxophone Quartet, and St. Louis Symphony players Catherine Lehr, Manuel Ramos, and Rich O'Donnell). St. Louis area writers were regularly featured, along with visiting writers who have included Derek Walcott, Adrienne Rich, Dennis Brutus, Toni Morrison, Carolyn Forche, W.S. Merwin, Breyten Breytenbach among others. Special Edition books by Arthur Brown and William Gass were produced in the 1980s.
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