The Paris Review was founded in 1953 in Paris by a group of young Americans — Peter Matthiessen, Harold L. Humes, George Plimpton, and others — who wanted a literary quarterly that would publish the best fiction and poetry rather than criticism. The magazine moved to New York but kept its name, which by then had become inseparable from a particular vision of literary culture: rigorous, cosmopolitan, and devoted to the idea that the most important thing a literary magazine can do is publish great writing.
Over more than seven decades, The Paris Review has published early or significant work by virtually every major American and international writer of the postwar era — from Philip Roth, Jack Kerouac, and Samuel Beckett to Adrienne Rich, Jeffrey Eugenides, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. But the magazine's most enduring contribution to literary culture may be its Art of Fiction interviews — long, probing conversations with writers about their craft, their processes, and their lives. The series, which now numbers in the hundreds, constitutes the most comprehensive oral history of literary practice ever assembled.
The magazine has been edited by a succession of figures who have each shaped its identity: Plimpton for nearly fifty years, then Philip Gourevitch, Lorin Stein, and now Emily Stokes. Through every transition, the core mission has remained unchanged: to find and publish the best new writing in the world, and to treat the act of writing with the seriousness and attention it deserves. There is no other literary magazine with the same combination of history, prestige, and continued editorial vitality. The Paris Review is not merely a magazine — it is an institution that has shaped what literature means in the English-speaking world.
Explore The Paris Review at <a href="https://www.theparisreview.org/" target="\_blank">theparisreview.org