World Literature Today

World Literature Today

World Literature Today, March 2013 issue
Editor-in-chief	Daniel Simon
Categories	Literature, Culture, International
Frequency	6 per year
Publisher	University of Oklahoma
First issue	January 1927
Country	United States
Based in	Norman, Oklahoma
Language	American English
Website	www.worldliteraturetoday.org
ISSN	0196-3570

World Literature Today is an American magazine of international literature and culture, published bimonthly at the University of Oklahoma, Norman. The magazine presents essays, poetry, fiction, and book reviews from all over the world in a format accessible to a broad audience. Its mission is to serve as an engaging, informative index to contemporary international literature. It was founded as Books Abroad in 1927 by Roy Temple House, chair of the Department of Modern Languages at the University of Oklahoma. In January 1977, the journal assumed its present name, World Literature Today.

The history of World Literature Today is a story of men and women of letters deeply committed to advancing the cause of literature, art, and culture. The emergence of an internationally acclaimed journal in a small campus town of the American heartland is a phenomenon conceived as a natural extension of the intellectual encounters of scholars, students, and the reading public within a large academic research institution. The 1980 Nobel Laureate and 1978 Neustadt Prize winner Czesław Miłosz once declared, “If WLT were not in existence, we would have to invent it. It fulfills the unique role of bringing information about works little known or inaccessible in English-speaking countries.”

The journal publishes articles, book reviews, and other features, while its offices function as a humanities center for a variety of cultural activities, as the magazine staff organizes conferences and symposia (see Puterbaugh Festival of International Literature and Culture), bestows literary prizes (see Neustadt International Prize for Literature and NSK Neustadt Prize for Children's Literature), and encourages the work of students, scholars, researchers, and readers of world literature everywhere. Devoted to the presentation and discussion of current literature in major and lesser-known languages of the world, WLT is the only international magazine focused on comprehensive and informative coverage of developments in contemporary literatures worldwide. WLT frequently represents the sole source available anywhere for information on the less familiar—often unjustly overlooked—literary traditions of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.