Annual literary journal of Boise State’s MFA Program in Creative Writing

Ten for Ten

From our first ten issues, The Idaho Review has had ten stories selected for reprint in The Best American Short Stories, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, The Pushcart Prize, New Stories from the South and Best of the West, plus another nineteen stories short listed by these prize anthologies.

Contributors include Ann Beattie, Richard Bausch, Joy Williams, Madison Smartt Bell, Ron Carlson, Rick Bass, Pam Houston, Lee K. Abbott, Edith Pearlman, Frederick Busch, John Kinsella, Doris Betts, George Garrett, Padgett Powell, Debora Gregor, Alan Cheuse, Jennifer Haigh, and Benjamin Percy.

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Story of the Week

Birdsong Under Water

by Melanie Rae Thon

Tim Dionne crouches at the river’s edge, listening to water under ice, whoosh and crackle, limbs snapping in the cold, hoo–coo–coo–quoo hoo–coo–coo–quoo owls waking. All day he’s willed himself to believe: ten hours since the boy leaped to save the dog and both plunged, swept down and under. You might rise even now, might hear … Continue

Poem of the Week

Isn’t It About Time

by Lawrence Raab

something extraordinary happened? —not to me personally, but something large and important for us all, like the return of our smarter ancestors, the ones who migrated, eons ago, to an alternate universe, where they sat around their sleek uncomplicated quarters and watched us fuck up our lives until they knew they had to come back … Continue


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  • Current News

    Binocular Vision, the latest book by frequent contributor Edith Pearlman, is a finalist for the National Book Award. The Idaho Review first published four of the stories in Binocular Vision.

    William Giraldi's Busy Monsters continues to get rave reviews in Publisher's Weekly, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and elsewhere. An excerpt from the book ("Sasquatch Love Song") first appeared in our 2009 issue.