Author Readings Celebrate Release of Spring 2026 Santa Monica Review on April 12

Author Readings Celebrate Release of Spring 2026 Santa Monica Review on April 12

SANTA MONICA, CA — Santa Monica College (SMC) announces the release of its spring 2026 edition of the Santa Monica Review (SMR),SMC’s esteemed national literary arts journal. Published twice yearly, the Review showcases the work of established authors alongside emerging writers, with a focus on narratives of the West Coast. The journal is the only nationally distributed literary magazine published by a U.S. community college. To celebrate the spring 2026 edition, Santa Monica College will hold an issue launch party featuring readings by Review authors. The party — “Santa Monica Review Presents...A Celebration of the Spring 2026 Issue with Readings by Recent Contributors” — will be held Sunday, April 12, from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. in The Edye at the SMC Performing Arts Center, 1310 11th Street (at Santa Monica Boulevard), Santa Monica.

Tickets for the launch party — available at smc.edu/tickets — cost a suggested donation of $10. Refreshments will be served. Abundant free parking available on premises. Seating is on a first-arrival basis.

The celebration, to be introduced by Review editor and Emcee Andrew Tonkovich, features a special welcome by Abby Walthausen (A Swale a Sort of Swaddle) and readings by four contributors to the current issue: Halina Duraj (The Family Cannon), Maceo Montoya (Preparatory Notes for Future Masterpieces), Dylan Landis (List of All Possible Desires), and Janet Fitch (Chimes of a Lost Cathedral).

The spring 2026 issue — edited by Tonkovich, also host of the weekly show Bibliocracy Radio on KPFK (90.7 FM) — features cover art by internationally shown artist Andrea Bowers, whose first museum retrospective show was recently featured at the Hammer Museum.

The issue includes 10 original short stories or novel excerpts and one autobiographical essay featuring work mostly from West Coast writers, but otherwise representative of diverse styles, experiences, and themes. Editor Tonkovich (Keeping Tahoe Blue) finds “celebratory incongruity” in this edition. “It’s full of irony because, perhaps, we are in such a disingenuous and contradictory moment. Still, there’s joy and recognition in seeing both real-life and fictional characters deal with it.”

First-time contributor Craig Chen offers a haunting high tech-inspired first-gen family parable of uneasy insight via an experimental medical procedure. Maceo Montoya, artist and fiction writer (Preparatory Notes for Future Masterpieces), shares a defining real-life episode in the experience of a young reader. John Fante biographer and short-story writer Stephen Cooper (River of Angels) contributes a version of the “Welcome” address he offered at a recent Santa Monica Review reading, a literary-political meditation on our times and Fante’s. Sam Dunnington (with previous work in One Story and Harper’s) explores challenges to friendship among academic research scientists competing for grants and more.

Cody Harrison (stories in The Gettysburg Review and The Forge Literary Journal) recounts in fiction the real-life fact-finding mission of one Friedrich Engels, who embarks on a rail journey with complications in a colorful, funny, stylish, and completely persuasive adventure story.

Recent UC Irvine MFA graduate Yoni Gelerntner (The Drift, The Baffler, Image Journal, and Mississippi Review) tells a morality tale and political fable about cultural allegiance and family by way of a dishonest Torah salesman.

Returning frequent contributors include James Warner (All Her Father’s Guns), Diane Lefer (California Transit), and Rhoda Huffey (The Hallelujah Side). Warner constructs a dark, daringly honest if cruel story of a Wehrmacht soldier who demonstrates unexpected grace, then puzzles over his resulting sense of humiliation. In reliably idiomatically pitch-perfect voice and characterization, Lefer delivers an L.A. story with cameos by real-life SoCal activists and a stand-up comedy through-line that sends up garbled television closed-captioning. The story relies on sophisticated dramatization of social movements, life during COVID, and engagement with technology, idiom, and popular culture. Huffey shares a chapter from her novel-in-progress, The Young Hotel, in which a young woman, estranged from her Pentecostal evangelist mother, purposely runs off with an old man because, yes, she wants to be a sinner.

Acclaimed novelist Janet Fitch (Chimes of a Lost Cathedral) captures the lonely life of a much-compromised, if weirdly heroic character choosing isolated comfort (a rent-controlled apartment) over love.

Dylan Landis shares a chapter from her newest, List of All Possible Desires. Often featured in SMR, the author of the newly reissued “Rainey Royal” series is an alum of Santa Monica College’s fiction workshop, with excerpts of previous books also first appearing in the magazine.

Three short chapters from Halina Duraj’s novel-in-progress introduce the recollections of a child of immigrants confronting powerful contradictions of class and identity in detailed, moving, and poignantly ironic episodes. She is the author of a story collection, The Family Cannon.

Says Tonkovich, “Irony is indeed the theme or through-line of the new issue, in which authors seem to assess or reassess what passes for disappointment or tragedy, finding even more of it in the poor life choices of their characters. Perhaps this is a commentary on our increasingly desperate political and cultural moment. Still, these stories are artful and often funny, offering wisdom, insight, and opportunity. Beyond their historical reach — 19th-century England to World War II to a near-future dystopic and tech-enhanced multi-cultural America — they offer both verisimilitude and imagination. Characters consider their choices for redemption, or at least revelation and self-recognition.”

This issue inaugurates the 38th year of publication of Santa Monica Review, founded by novelist and retired SMC English instructor Jim Krusoe (The Sleep Garden) with legendary SMC President Richard Moore. As conceived of and produced by Krusoe and Moore, the magazine continues to celebrate urgent literary engagement in a changing world.

The issue includes a mix of longtime frequent contributors and well-known and much-published writers, along with emerging and first-appearance contributors. Tonkovich is especially pleased to present first-time writers. “It’s rewarding to see early work from, and then follow the development of talented writers who go on to publish collections and novels, often including writing that first appeared in the magazine.”

Additional events scheduled to celebrate the new issue are listed on the SMR website and include hosting a booth April 18-19 at this year’s Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, offering complimentary copies of the magazine to visitors at Booth #072 at the USC campus, as well as distributing information on SMC’s abundant academic and cultural opportunities.

Published twice yearly, the Review has presented readers experimental, thoughtful, and funny original writing — including essays and short stories by Michelle Latiolais, Lisa Teasley, Alice Mattison, Keenan Norris, Ismet Prcic, and Gary Soto — in 38 years of publication, and is a celebrated national magazine. Recent stand-out work published in the Review appears in the annual Pushcart Prize, Best American Short Stories, and PEN/O. Henry anthologies.

Santa Monica Review is sold online at the SMR website (smc.edu/sm_review), and in print editions at the SMC Campus Store (SMC Main Campus, 1900 Pico Blvd., Santa Monica), at Beyond Baroque and Small World Books in Venice, and at other area booksellers. Copies may also be ordered by mail. Details are available at smc.edu/sm_review.

The publication costs $14 per issue or $25 for the two issues each year. More information is available at the Santa Monica Review website (smc.edu/sm_review) or by calling 949-235-8193. All events subject to change or cancellation without notice.

Santa Monica Review is a project of Santa Monica College, part of its mission to promote literacy and engagement with the literary arts in Southern California. Santa Monica College is a California Community College accredited by the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC).

# # #