Santa Monica College will mark the release of the Fall 2026 Santa Monica Review with a launch party and readings by recent contributors next Sunday, October 25, from 5 to 7 p.m. at The Edye at the SMC Performing Arts Center, 1310 11th St. Tickets carry a suggested $10 donation, with free parking and first-come, first-served seating, and the new issue — packed with 14 new short stories — will be sold at the event alongside refreshments.
The gathering, first detailed by the Santa Monica Daily Press, will be emceed by longtime editor Andrew Tonkovich, who has shepherded the journal since 1999. Dylan Landis, author of List of All Possible Desires and an alum of SMC's fiction workshop, will offer a welcome, with readings from Mary Ore, Kareem Tayyar, Richard Wirick and Monona Wali rounding out the evening's program.
A Magazine With No Peer Among Community Colleges
The Santa Monica Review publishes twice a year and bills itself as the only nationally distributed literary magazine published by a U.S. community college, spotlighting established and emerging writers with a focus on West Coast narratives, according to the same report. Work first printed in its pages has gone on to appear in the Pushcart Prize, Best American Short Stories and PEN/O. Henry anthologies.
Tonkovich's reach extends well beyond the Review's editorial desk. He also hosts Bibliocracy Radio, a weekly half-hour literary interview program on Pacifica station KPFK 90.7 FM, where he regularly interviews fiction and nonfiction authors even as he leads editorial selection for the Review. He additionally founded Citric Acid, an online literary quarterly focused on Orange County history and literature that received an operations grant from the California Arts Council in 2026, after co-editing Orange County: A Literary Field Guide in 2017.
Tonkovich said he was especially pleased to offer writing by first-time-in-print writers in the new issue, which introduces newcomers Mary Ore, Brian Conlon and Joshua Brorby. Ore is an SMC creative writing workshop alum, while Conlon and Brorby are both described as established fiction writers. Among the pieces featured are Dead Rat, which depicts a trip to the dentist turning into torturously funny urban misadventures, and Eastern Churches, a ghostly family reunion tale told by a dying narrator about his father, Mr. Harms.
Returning Voices and a New Cover
The Fall 2026 issue also brings back contributors Monona Wali, Richard Wirick, Jeffrey Moskowitz and San Diego poet Bryan D. Price, joined by Kareem Tayyar, Ashley Farmer, San Francisco writer Olga Zilberbourg, Pushcart Prize winner Gregory Tower, and Shane Castle, an editor at the Alaska Quarterly Review.
The cover features artwork titled Holding History in Our Hand by visual artist elin o'Hara slavick, a former UNC Chapel Hill studio art professor and UC Irvine artist-in-residence known for conceptual work addressing war, memory and nuclear power. According to Sarah Lawrence College, slavick originally created the piece as an artist book commemorating the 75th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Roots Going Back to 1988
Novelist and poet Jim Krusoe founded the Santa Monica Review in September 1988 with support from then-SMC President Richard Moore, launching what has become a 38-year run of publishing influential regional literary voices alongside debut writers. Krusoe, who taught creative writing at SMC for decades, saw his 2002 novel Iceland named one of the ten best fiction books of the year by both the Los Angeles Times and the Austin Chronicle, per background on the author.
Previous editions have featured prominent West Coast authors including Michelle Latiolais, Lisa Teasley, Keenan Norris, David L. Ulin and Ismet Prcic. The journal maintains a year-round open submission policy for short fiction and creative nonfiction without charging submission fees, according to Poets & Writers.
Where To Find It, and How Much It Costs
The launch comes amid a broader institutional push at SMC, which expanded its Creative Writing Program in 2025 by introducing a 12-unit Creative Writing Certificate of Achievement along with four new workshop courses covering fiction, poetry and nonfiction. The expanded curriculum replaced older introductory courses to establish structured academic pathways for creative writing students.
Single issues of the Santa Monica Review cost $14, or $25 for both issues of the year, and copies are sold at smc.edu/sm_review, the SMC campus store at 1900 Pico Blvd., and area independent booksellers including Beyond Baroque and Small World Books. Beyond Baroque operates out of the 1906 Old Venice City Hall on Venice Boulevard, a historic non-profit literary arts center founded in 1968 by George Drury Smith that relocated to the former city hall building in 1979, per background on the venue. Small World Books, meanwhile, has operated on the Venice Beach Boardwalk at 1401 Ocean Front Walk since 1976, under a red-and-white awning behind the Sidewalk Café, and remains one of the last remaining independent bookstores in coastal Los Angeles.
The Edye itself seats about 100 people as a black box theater within the SMC Performing Arts Center, which also houses the 500-seat mainstage BroadStage venue that opened in 2008. More information on the launch party is available at smc.edu/sm_review or by calling 949-235-8193, though SMC notes all college events are subject to change or cancellation.
