''Little Star Journal'' is an annual print literary

magazine A magazine is a periodical literature, periodical publication, print or digital, produced on a regular schedule, that contains any of a variety of subject-oriented textual and visual content (media), content forms. Magazines are generally fin ...

founded in 2009 by Ann Kjellberg, founder of the book-reviewing newsletter Book Post, long-time editor at ''

The New York Review of Books ''The New York Review of Books'' (or ''NYREV'' or ''NYRB'') is a semi-monthly magazine with articles on literature, culture, economics, science and current affairs. Published in New York City, it is inspired by the idea that the discussion of ...

'', and the literary executor of the poet

Joseph Brodsky Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky (; ; 24 May 1940 – 28 January 1996) was a Russian and American poet and essayist. Born in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) in the Soviet Union, Brodsky ran afoul of Soviet authorities and was expelled ("strongly ...

. ''Little Star'' appeared in seven print issues between 2007 and 2017. Little Star featured the work of

Derek Walcott Sir Derek Alton Walcott OM (23 January 1930 – 17 March 2017) was a Saint Lucian poet and playwright. He received the 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature. His works include the Homeric epic poem '' Omeros'' (1990), which many critics view "as ...

Wisława Szymborska Maria Wisława Anna SzymborskaVioletta Szostagazeta.pl, 9 February 2012. ostęp 11 February 2012 (; 2 July 1923 – 1 February 2012) was a Polish people, Polish poet, essayist, translator, and recipient of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Liter ...

Seamus Heaney Seamus Justin Heaney (13 April 1939 – 30 August 2013) was an Irish Irish poetry, poet, playwright and translator. He received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. Among his best-known works is ''Death of a Naturalist'' (1966), his first m ...

, Les Murray,

Ann Beattie Ann Beattie (born September 8, 1947) is an American novelist and short story writer. She has received an award for excellence from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and the PEN/Malamud Award for excellence in the short story ...

Sigrid Nunez Sigrid Nunez (born 1951) is an American writer who is best known for her novels. Her seventh novel, ''The Friend (novel), The Friend'', won the 2018 National Book Award for Fiction. In 2025, Nunez was named as the recipient of a Windham-Campbell ...

Charles Simic Dušan Simić ( sr-cyr, Душан Симић, ; May 9, 1938 – January 9, 2023), known as Charles Simic, was a Serbian American poet and poetry co-editor of ''The Paris Review''. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1990 for '' The W ...

Gary Snyder Gary Snyder (born May 8, 1930) is an American poet, essayist, lecturer, and environmental activist. His early poetry has been associated with the Beat Generation and the San Francisco Renaissance and he has been described as the "poet laureate ...

Marilyn Hacker Marilyn Hacker (born November 27, 1942) is an American poet, translator and critic. She is Professor of English emerita at the City College of New York. Her books of poetry include ''Presentation Piece'' (1974), which won the National Book Award, ...

Tomasz Różycki Tomasz Różycki (born 1970) is a Polish poet and translator. He studied Romance Languages at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, and taught French at the Foreign Languages Teaching College in Opole. In addition to his teaching, he translated ...

Alice Fulton Alice Fulton (born 1952) is an American author of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. Fulton is the Ann S. Bowers Professor of English Emerita at Cornell University. Her awards include the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, ...

Jean Valentine __NOTOC__ Jean Valentine (April 27, 1934December 29, 2020) was an American poet and the New York State Poet Laureate from 2008 to 2010. Her poetry collection, ''Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems, 1965–2003'', was awarded the 2004 N ...

James Kelman James Kelman (born 9 June 1946) is a Scottish novelist, short story writer, playwright and essayist. His fiction and short stories feature accounts of internal mental processes of usually, but not exclusively, working class narrators and their ...

Padgett Powell Padgett Powell (born April 25, 1952 in Gainesville, Florida) is an American novelist in the Southern literary tradition. His debut novel, ''Edisto'' (1984), was nominated for thNational Book Awardand was excerpted in ''The New Yorker''. Powell ...

Paul Muldoon Paul Muldoon is an Irish poet. He has published more than thirty collections and won a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the T. S. Eliot Prize. At Princeton University he has been both the Howard G. B. Clark '21 University Professor in the Humani ...

Jamaica Kincaid Jamaica Kincaid (; born Elaine Cynthia Potter Richardson on May 25, 1949) is an Antiguan–American novelist, essayist, gardener, and gardening writer. Born in St. John's, the capital of Antigua and Barbuda, she now lives in North Bennington, ...

Adam Zagajewski Adam Zagajewski (21 June 1945 – 21 March 2021) was a Polish poet, novelist, translator, and essayist. He was awarded the 2004 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, the 2016 Griffin Poetry Prize Lifetime Recognition Award, the 2017 ...

Eliot Weinberger Eliot Weinberger (born 6 February 1949 in New York City) is an American writer, essayist, editor, and translator. He is primarily known for his essays and political articles, the former characterized by their wide-ranging subjects and experimental ...

, C. K. Williams,

Mark Strand Mark Strand (April 11, 1934 – November 29, 2014) was a Canadian-born American poet, essayist and translator. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1990 and received the Wallace Stevens Award in 2004 ...

Caleb Crain Caleb Crain is an American writer, who was a Lambda Literary Award nominee in the Gay Fiction category at the 26th Lambda Literary Awards in 2014 for his debut novel ''Necessary Errors''.Lydia Davis Lydia Davis (born July 15, 1947) is an American short story writer, novelist, essayist, and translator from French and other languages, who often writes very short stories. Davis has produced several new translations of French literary classics ...

Carl Phillips Carl Phillips (born 23 July 1959) is an American writer and poet. He is a professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis. In 2023, he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his '' Then the War: And Selected Poems, 2007-2020.'' ...

, Joy Williams,

Rowan Ricardo Phillips Rowan Ricardo Phillips (born 1974 in New York City) is an American poet, writer, editor, and translator. He is a Distinguished Professor of English at Stony Brook University, the poetry editor of ''The New Republic'', and the editor of Princeto ...

W. G. Sebald Winfried Georg Sebald (18 May 1944 – 14 December 2001), known as W. G. Sebald or (as he preferred) Max Sebald, was a German writer and academic. At the time of his death at the age of 57, he was according to ''The New Yorker'' ”widely recog ...

Durs Grünbein Durs Grünbein (born 1962) is a German poet and essayist. Life and career Durs Grünbein was born in Dresden in 1962 and grew up there. He studied Theater Studies in East Berlin, to which he moved in 1985. Since the Peaceful Revolution nonvio ...

, and

Tim Parks Timothy Harold Parks (born 19 December 1954) is a British novelist who has lived in Italy since 1981. He is also an author of nonfiction, a translator from Italian to English, and a professor of literature. Early life and academic career Parks ...

, among others.

John Banville William John Banville (born 8 December 1945) is an Irish novelist, short story writer, Literary adaptation, adapter of dramas and screenwriter. Though he has been described as "the heir to Marcel Proust, Proust, via Vladimir Nabokov, Nabokov", ...

called it, “A very fine venture indeed, everything such a magazine should be.” From 2013 to 2015, ''Little Star'' published a weekly app version, Little Star Weekly, with the app platform 29th Street Publishing. Little Star Weekly also featured music and art edited by

Alex Ross Nelson Alexander Ross (born January 22, 1970) is an American comic book creator, comic book writer and artist known primarily for his painted interiors, covers, and design work. He first became known with the 1994 miniseries ''Marvels'', on which ...

Mary Weatherford Mary Weatherford (born 1963) is a Los Angeles–based painter. She is known for her large paintings incorporating neon lighting tubes. Her work is featured in museums and galleries including the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Brooklyn Mus ...

, and John Zinsser, among others. The magazine is rooted in book culture and the reflective traditions of a number of well-remembered hand-held journals of the past, such as ''

The Criterion ''The Criterion'' was a British literary magazine published from October 1922 to January 1939. ''The Criterion'' (or the ''Criterion'') was, for most of its run, a quarterly journal, although for a period in 1927–28 it was published monthly. It ...

'', ''

The Partisan Review ''Partisan Review'' (''PR'') was a left-wing small-circulation quarterly "little magazine" dealing with literature, politics, and cultural commentary published in New York City. The magazine was launched in 1934 by the Communist Party USA–affi ...

'', ''

Antaeus Antaeus (; , derived from ), known to the Berbers as Anti, was a figure in Traditional Berber religion, Berber and Greek mythology. He was famed for his defeat by Heracles as part of the Labours of Hercules. Family In Greek sources, he was ...

''. It was the agility of digital reproduction and the reach of literary blogging and social networking that prompted editors to frame a print tradition with mixed-media. The magazine takes its name from a line from

: "But soon, I’m told, I’ll lose my epaulets altogether / and dwindle into a little star."

History

''Little Star'' was established by Ann Kjellberg. She was joined by the poet Melissa Green as contributing editor.

Reception

''Little Star'' was reviewed on the blogs of ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...

'', ''

The Paris Review ''The Paris Review'' is a quarterly English-language literary magazine established in Paris in 1953 by Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen, and George Plimpton. In its first five years, ''The Paris Review'' published new works by Jack Kerouac, ...

'',

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

' ''T Magazine'',

USA Today ''USA Today'' (often stylized in all caps) is an American daily middle-market newspaper and news broadcasting company. Founded by Al Neuharth in 1980 and launched on September 14, 1982, the newspaper operates from Gannett's corporate headq ...

's ''Character Approved'', and ''Paste''. A story by

, ''Manifesto'', was excerpted in the June 2010 issue of ''

Harper's ''Harper's Magazine'' is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts. Launched in New York City in June 1850, it is the oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the United States. ''Harper's Magazine'' has ...

''.Padgett Powell
"Afraid to be men"
excerpt from "Manifesto" in Little Star #1, ''Harper’s'', June 2010. Review of Little Star #7 by Craig Ledoux
New Pages
November 18, 2018 “In the Beginning,” by Eliot Weinberger, excerpted from Little Star #6 i
Harper’s
February 2015 “That New New Lit: Kicking off 2015 (and the best of 2014),” by Jacob Kaplan
Impose
January 6, 2015 “Round-Down: A Look at the Crowded Literary Journal Landscape,” by Peter Kispert
Ploughshares blog
December 23, 2014 “That New New Lit: November,” by Jacob Kaplan
Impose
November 12, 2104 “Black Balloon Publishing’s Favorite Literary Magazines,” by Michelle King
The Airship
Black Balloon, June 27, 2014 “Ghazal,” by Marilyn Hacker, from Little Star #5, receives,

Pushcart Prize The Pushcart Prize is an American literary prize published by Pushcart Press that honors the best "poetry, short fiction, essays or literary whatnot" published in the small presses over the previous year. Magazine and small book press editors are ...

for 2013 “Literary MagNet News and Trends,” by Travis Kurowsky,
Poets & Writers
March/April 2014 “The Mission,” by Joy Williams, excerpted from Little Star #5 i
Harper’s
February 2014 “Word for Word: ‘Little Star’ journal and app shining bright,” by Anakana Schofield
Irish Times
January 11, 2014 What I am reading (Anakana Schofield), by Ian McGillis

July 5, 2013 “Literary Heirs,” by Stephen Heyman
T Magazine culture section
New York Times blog, February 10, 2012 “Writing Adrift in the World,” by Tim Parks
New York Review blog
January 19, 2012 Staff Picks: Robyn Cresswell
Paris Review Daily
November 4, 2011 “Mark Strand, Jamaica Kincaid, and Ian Frazier Help Launch Little Star #2,” by Jeannie Vanasc

May 10, 2011 Three pieces by Lydia Davis, from Little Star #1, receive, Pushcart Prize for 2011 “A Little Star is Born,” by Jessa Crispin, �
Need to Know on PBS
” January 4, 2011 Editor Ann Kjellberg o
The Leonard Lopate Show
WNYC, December 21, 2010 An NYRB Staff Favorite (Eve Bowen)
Typepad, New York Review Books
December 31, 2010 “Afraid to be men,” excerpt from “Manifesto” in Little Star #1, by Padgett Powell
Harper’s
June 2010 “The Booky Man: Little Star and Loose Change,” by Charles McNair,

March 11, 2010 “Welcome, Welcome Little Star,” by Joseph Hutchison, �

” June 4, 2010 “Catching Up with Little Star,” by Daniel Nester, �
We Who Are About To Die
” August 8, 2010 “Best of the Bunch,” by Daniel Hartlay, �
Thinking Blue Guitars
” May 5, 2010

References

External links

* {{Official website, http://littlestarjournal.com/ Poetry magazines published in the United States Annual magazines published in the United States English-language magazines Magazines established in 2009 Magazines published in New York City