Call Number:

Ms. Coll. 517

Repository:

University of Pennsylvania: Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts

Extent:

5 boxes

Language:

English

Preferred Citation:

Painted Bride Quarterly records, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania

Date:

1973-2004 (inclusive)

Creator:

Painted Bride Quarterly

Form:

Correspondence, Poems, Manuscripts for publication, Financial records, Poetry, and Periodicals

Abstract:

The collection comprises correspondence and submissions between artists and journal editors, as well as manuscripts, galleys, published copies, and grant records.

Since 1973, the Painted Bride Quarterly has become the tri-state area's Paris Review: a literary forum where fiction, prose, poetry, commentary, essays, experimental texts, photography and interviews with avant-luminaries worldwide meet regularly. Based at Rutgers University in Camden, founding editors Louise Simons and R. Daniel Evans have made PBQ (which became its own nonprofit corporation in 1977) into an elegant, eloquent journal whose focus, though global, would never lose sight of regional artists and writers.

The Painted Bride Quarterly is the stepsister to the Painted Bride Art Center, although they share a name they are in fact separate nonprofit entities.

Philadelphia, according to Ott, "is very lucky to have the Bride (magazine and Center). Both are class acts, with high production values, informed curating/editing, rich history, and independence (by which I mean non-academic). The alternative arts movement, with its government subsidies, which grew in the 70s and 80s, was damaged by the NEA censorship wars of the 80s. Many cities lost their Painted Brides. The Quarterly has been a consistent ambassador to other cultural hubs for Philadelphia's emerging arts in ways that the Art Center alone could not be."

Since its first print issue in 1973, this independent, Philadelphia-based literary magazine has survived on the dedication of volunteers – local writers, poets, critics, teachers, editors, and other artists – and on the patience of its contributors and loyal readership for each issue's funding to be secured.

In 1999 PBQ, originally a print quarterly, became a hybrid publication, with new online issues appearing quarterly and the year's issues printed in book form at the end of each year.

Having weighed the pros and cons of print and Web – reading a hand-held book versus viewing a computer screen, the rise in reputable Webzines, increased Internet access and literacy – PBQ's 15-member, two-city editorial team easily reached their consensus to go electronic in 2000 when faced with yet another full double-issue Painted Bride Quarterly "all dressed up but with no place to go" said Senior Editor Daniel Nestor.

PBQ inaugurated its online incarnation with its Spring 2000 issue #63. 15,000 hits in 16 days made if virtually (ha!) painless to say goodbye to the 70-100 glossy covered, perfect-bound pages of PBQ's historical print publication. Still, the editors know that folks like to hold the "spoils of their success in their hands," and so will print annual "best-of" anthologies, the first one to include the entire issuer #63, in addition to the best of issues #64-66, as a thank-you to its subscribers.

When the Department of English and Philosophy hired Kathy Volk Miller to teach, they were also pleased to learn that the Painted Bride Quarterly (PBQ), the literary journal she has edited for many years, would be coming with her. Housing a literary journal that has survived for 33 years is certainly a coup for Drexel, but the internships the journal provides – both volunteer and for course credits – are proving themselves to be invaluable for Drexel students.

The records of the Painted Bride Quarterly at the University of Pennsylvania Library comprise the correspondence and submissions between artists and PBQ journal editors, as well as manuscripts, galleys, published PBQ journals and its Grant Records.