''Grand Street'' was an American magazine published from 1981 to 2004. It was described by '' The New York Times'' as "one of the most revered literary magazines of the postwar era."

Founding

''Grand Street'' was founded as a quarterly by

Ben Sonnenberg Benjamin "Ben" Sonnenberg, Jr. (December 30, 1936 – June 24, 2010) was an American publisher and the founder of the literary magazine '' Grand Street'', which he began as a quarterly journal in 1981. Sonnenberg was born on December 30, 1936, ...

in 1981. When

Jean Stein Jean Babette Stein (February 9, 1934 – April 30, 2017) was an American author and editor. Early life Stein was born to a Jewish family in Chicago. Her father was Jules C. Stein (1896–1981), co-founder of the Music Corporation of America (MCA ...

became editor and publisher in 1990, the magazine's format changed to encompass visual art, and it began actively to seek out international authors and artists to introduce to its readers.

Contributors

Contributors to ''Grand Street'' included

Andrew Cockburn Andrew Myles Cockburn ( ; born 7 January 1947) is a British journalist and the Washington, D.C., editor of '' Harper's Magazine''. Early life Born in the London suburb of Willesden in 1947, Cockburn grew up in County Cork, Ireland. His father ...

, Don DeLillo,

John Ashbery John Lawrence Ashbery (July 28, 1927 – September 3, 2017) was an American poet and art critic. Ashbery is considered the most influential American poet of his time. Oxford University literary critic John Bayley wrote that Ashbery "sounded, in ...

, Jean Baudrillard,

William Eggleston William Eggleston (born July 27, 1939) is an American photographer. He is widely credited with increasing recognition for color photography as a legitimate artistic medium. Eggleston's books include ''William Eggleston's Guide'' (1976) and ''The ...

William K. Everson Keith William Everson (8 April 1929 – 14 April 1996) was an English- American archivist, author, critic, educator, collector, and film historian. He also discovered several lost films. Everson's given first names were Keith William, but he r ...

William H. Gass William Howard Gass (July 30, 1924 – December 6, 2017) was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, critic, and philosophy professor. He wrote three novels, three collections of short stories, a collection of novellas, and seven vol ...

Doug Henwood Doug Henwood (born December 7, 1952) is an American journalist, economic analyst, author, and financial trader who writes frequently about economic affairs. Until 2013 he published a newsletter, ''Left Business Observer'', that analyzes economics a ...

, Christopher Hitchens,

Dennis Hopper Dennis Lee Hopper (May 17, 1936 – May 29, 2010) was an American actor, filmmaker and photographer. He attended the Actors Studio, made his first television appearance in 1954, and soon after appeared in ''Giant'' (1956). In the next ten years ...

Kenzaburō Ōe is a Japanese writer and a major figure in contemporary Japanese literature. His novels, short stories and essays, strongly influenced by French and American literature and literary theory, deal with political, social and philosophical issues, i ...

Jane Kramer Jane Kramer (born August 7, 1938) is an American journalist who is the European correspondent for ''The New Yorker''; she has written a regular "Letter from Europe" for twenty years. Kramer has also written nine books, the latest of which, ''Lone ...

, David Mamet,

Susan Minot Susan Minot (born December 7, 1956) is an American novelist, short story writer, poet, playwright, screenwriter and painter. Early life Minot was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and grew up in Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts. Her father, ...

, Rick Moody,

Michael Moore Michael Francis Moore (born April 23, 1954) is an American filmmaker, author and left-wing activist. His works frequently address the topics of globalization and capitalism. Moore won the 2002 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for ' ...

, Mark Rudman,

Terence Kilmartin Terence Kevin Kilmartin CBE (10 January 1922 – 17 August 1991) was an Irish-born translator who served as the literary editor of ''The Observer'' between 1952 and 1986. He is best known for his 1981 revision of the Scott Moncrieff translati ...

Onat Kutlar Onat Kutlar (25 January 1936 – 11 January 1995) was a prominent Turkish writer and poet, founder of the Turkish Sinematek and cofounder of the Istanbul International Film Festival. Biography Onat Kutlar was born in Alanya, Turkey, on 25 J ...

, Michael Palmer, Salman Rushdie,

James Salter James Arnold Horowitz (June 10, 1925 – June 19, 2015), better known as James Salter, his pen name and later-adopted legal name, was an American novelist and short-story writer. Originally a career officer and pilot in the United States Air For ...

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 being cited by literary critics as one of the g ...

, David Shields, Terry Southern,

Saul Steinberg Saul Steinberg (June 15, 1914 – May 12, 1999) was a Romanian-American artist, best known for his work for ''The New Yorker'', most notably ''View of the World from 9th Avenue''. He described himself as "a writer who draws". Biography Ste ...

, José Saramago,

Fiona Shaw Fiona Shaw (born Fiona Mary Wilson; 10 July 1958) is an Irish film and theatre actress. She is known for her roles as Petunia Dursley in the ''Harry Potter'' film series (2001–2010), Marnie Stonebrook in the fourth season of the HBO serie ...

, Quentin Tarantino, William Trevor, Edward Said, David Foster Wallace, Jeanette Winterson and

William T. Vollmann William Tanner Vollmann (born July 28, 1959) is an American novelist, journalist, war correspondent, short story writer, and essayist. He won the 2005 National Book Award for Fiction with the novel ''Europe Central''.

. In his memoir, ''Lost Property: Memoirs and Confessions of a Bad Boy,'' Grand Street founder

wrote that he published in the journal what he believed was the last work of

Samuel Beckett Samuel Barclay Beckett (; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish novelist, dramatist, short story writer, theatre director, poet, and literary translator. His literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal and tragicomic expe ...

: a poem called "What is the Word".

References

External links

Complete index of issues
at

LibraryThing LibraryThing is a social cataloging web application for storing and sharing book catalogs and various types of book metadata. It is used by authors, individuals, libraries, and publishers. Based in Portland, Maine, LibraryThing was developed by ...

Official site
archived at the Wayback Machine
Columbia University Archival Collections: Ben Sonnenberg Papers

Columbia University Archival Collections: Grand Street Publication Records
* 'Grand Street'' at Quarterly magazines published in the United States Defunct literary magazines published in the United States Magazines established in 1981 Magazines disestablished in 2004 Magazines published in New York City {{US-lit-mag-stub