Hello dear reader. Thank you for being here. There are literally a billion other places you could be on the Internet right now, and I think it’s pretty cool that out of all those places you are here with us, even if you’re here by mistake, possibly because you’re looking for the sports bar under this same name in Central Arizona. That’s cool, as long as you order a beer for me whenever you get there. You’re still here, reading this post, and that’s what matters.

It is my pleasure to welcome you to the Under Review. You probably don’t know us because we didn’t exist until like a second ago, but I can assure you we are very real. Like most literary journals, you can find out who we are and what we’re looking for on other pages of this website, but I wanted to take the opportunity to also explain why we’re here. To shed some light on why we’re occupying this little corner of cyberspace. You only get to write one inaugural blog post so we might as well make it our origin story, and like any origin story worth its salt, the origin story of this here literary journal takes place at a Midwestern dive bar.

There are a handful of spectacular dive bars near the campus of Hamline University in beautiful Saint Paul, Minnesota. And for the students of the MFA in creative writing program at Hamline, two neighboring dive bars have risen above the rest; Gabe’s by the Park, and Halftime Rec (a number of scenes from the classic Minnesota movie Grumpy Old Men were filmed at Halftime Rec, which has nothing to do with any of this, but is still pretty cool). There are Gabe’s nights, and there are Rec nights, and it happened to be a Gabe’s night when two members of the Hamline MFA community went to the bar to blow off some steam and ended up founding a new whole ass literary magazine by accident.

I walked into Gabe’s with our managing editor Meghan Maloney-Vinz (only she wasn’t our managing editor yet because we didn’t exist yet) to have a few beers after a stressful week of working on my thesis for my MFA at Hamline. Meghan completed her MFA at Hamline in 2007, so she’s been through the same fire and is also just a calm and smart person, who has an ability to use her own sanity to make you feel saner, making her an excellent person to get beers with in any scenario, but especially this one.

My thesis was an essay collection about basketball, so while we were talking about that, we were also talking about sports, sports writing, and sports writing’s role in what some people refer to as literature. After a certain amount of time and a certain number of beers, the conversation sounded something like this:

Terry: I mean no matter how good the writing is you’re never going to see an essay about Space Jam in the Paris Review.

Meghan: That is probably true.

Terry: It is and it’s bullshit.*

*Managing Editor’s note: we love the Paris Review

Meghan: So why don’t you start your own journal that publishes that kind of work?

Terry: I don’t have the money to print my own journal.

Meghan: I’m not saying you should print one. Do it online.

Terry: Online you say? Hmmm, sounds just crazy enough to work.

The gears in my slightly-more-than-slightly inebriated brain started to turn and soon the seeds of this idea Meghan planted in my head began to sprout and grow into obsession.

“The first thing we need is a name,” I said, hoping Meghan would understand my very obscure reference to Empire Records, a spectacular comedy from the mid-90s. She didn’t and that was probably for the best.

“So it’s ‘we’ already, huh?” she asked.

“It is,” I said.

“Fine,” she said.

And our sports-themed literary journal was born. But we still needed a name, and that detail took up much of our time over the following months. A shared Google Doc quickly accumulated more than 400 nominations; most of them terrible sports cliches, several of them already copyrighted, and many written purely for comedic effect.

The first name I felt attached to like Lavender Brown to Ron Weasley in the Goblet of Fire was the Peach Basket Review, in honor of the object Dr. James Naismith used to invent the game of basketball. The second Peach Basket Review went through my brain for the first time I thought I nailed it. So much so my ensuing text to Meghan read, “the Peach Basket Review! Fucking nailed it! Boom!”

Anytime you send three or more explanation points in a single text message, you should probably rethink your enthusiasm.

Meghan was on board with Peach Basket Review for a second before wisely pointing out that “if this was just about basketball, or just about Georgia, or just about peaches, it would work, but since it’s not really solely about any of those things….veto.”

Damn you and your reason, Meghan.

I fought Meghan for over a week on the merits of a name as classy as Peach Basket Review. A Wisconsin girl, I was hoping she’d succumb to my plea that it would be in the best interest of any literary journal to bear the initials P-B-R (which totally almost worked*), but I had to admit she had a point, we needed to cast a wider net. But how?

*Another Managing Editor’s note: Terry’s PBR pitch did almost work

Several more names were nominated over the course of several more happy hours (which we eventually renamed ‘board meetings’), but nothing felt quite right. Then in the wee hours of a bitterly cold Twin Cities winter night, it was Meghan’s turn to text me in excitement.

“I think I have it,” she said.

“Yeah?! Hit me.” I said.

“The Under Review” she said.

“Classy,” I said, “but why?”

And what Meghan wrote back has officially become our mission statement.

“The whistle blows and play is suspended. The action breaks. The clock stops. The explanation you’ve heard a thousand times; ‘the previous play is Under Review.’ Something that was certain a moment ago is now in question. Did he make it? Did she catch it? Was their toe on the line? Were they in bounds? Did they get it right? Are we good or are we screwed?

“Even when a review takes a moment to complete, it tends to take a lifetime. It’s a moment of reflection and reconsideration, of fear and faith. It’s a moment to evaluate the smallest detail and hope for the best result. A single moment holding infinite emotions, it’s only natural we name our sports literary journal after such a moment.”

The Under Review strives to publish work that brings these moments to life. Thanks to Meghan’s support, and the talent of design editor and Bay Area sports fan JP Bertram, we’re officially here to bring these moments to life.  

Welcome to tUR, our first issue will be published in December of 2019. Please, send us your work to Editors@UnderReviewLit.com. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram, @UnderReviewLit, and Like us on Facebook.

December is a long time from now, but we’ll be posting fun stuff on our blog to hold us over until then. Thank you, again, so much for being here. I can’t wait to make this journal for you.

Sincerely,
Terry Horstman
Executive Editor the Under Review