Belmont Story Review is a national magazine of literary arts, faith and culture.
The magazine aims to surprise and delight readers through an eclectic mix of storytelling which includes fiction, personal essay, poetry, songwriting, drama, graphic narrative, and photography; as well as creative reportage, including coverage of music, film, creativity and collaboration, and the intersection of faith and culture.
We seek to publish new and established writers passionate about their craft, fearlessly encountering difficult ideas, seeking to explore human experience in all its broken blessedness.
Finally, in addition to bringing engaging narratives in all its forms to a wide audience, we seek to exemplify the mission of Belmont University by venturing into the wider culture-shaping arena of literary arts, extending and honing our skills as readers, writers, editors, artists, entrepreneurs, and citizens within a Christian community of learning and service.
Author Biography:
Richard Sowienski serves as Associate Professor and Program Director of Publishing, Belmont University's first-in-the-nation undergraduate major devoted to magazine and book publishing. He has over 30 years of publishing experience, including Managing Editor of the literary magazine, The Missouri Review, Parenting and Education Editor for Better Homes and Gardens, and a founding editor for the country music and lifestyle magazine Country America. He began his career as an ad agency account executive and Advertising and Promotion Manager. Recently he served as Mentor for Nashville Entrepreneur Center's Publishing Accelerator Program and Writer-in-Residence for Journey Group, a magazine custom publisher in Charlottesville, VA. He holds an MFA degree from the University of Iowa's Nonfiction Writing Program. Gary L. McDowell (Ph.D., Western Michigan University) is an Assistant Professor of English at Belmont University, and he serves as Poetry Editor of the Belmont Story Review. His first full-length book of poetry, American Amen (Dream Horse Press, 2010), won the 2009 Orphic Prize for poetry, and he's the author of two previous volumes of poetry, Blueprint (Pudding House, 2005) and They Speak of Fruit (Cooper Dillon, 2009). He's also the co-editor of the best-selling anthology, The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Prose Poetry: Contemporary Poets in Discussion and Practice (Rose Metal Press, 2010). His writing has won awards from Minnetonka Review, the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Foundation, Dream Horse Press, The National Poetry Review, and others, and his poems and essays have appeared in dozens of publications, including Bellingham Review, Colorado Review, Mid-American Review, New England Review, and Quarterly West.
