Descant: 50 Years

Robert Penn Warren, Karl Shapiro, Joyce Carol Oates, Charles Bukowski, and Denise Levertov are but a few of the outstanding authors whose works grace this celebration of fifty years ofdescant, the literary journal of Texas Christian University. This retrospective traces the journal’s history from its beginnings as the product of a literary discussion group modeled after the Vanderbilt Fugitives to its recent years as a critically acclaimed small magazine that receives thousands of submissions and offers annual awards for fiction and poetry.

The anthology begins with a memoir by Betsy Colquitt, who served as the journal’s editor for nearly forty years and who, along with Louise Cowan and the TCU Fugitives,” foundeddescant in 1956. The early years of descant had a distinctly local flavor and featured such young talents as Bill Camfield, who would later become a pioneer writer and performer in children’s television, and William Barney, who would become Poet Laureate of Texas.

But Colquitt had an uncanny ability for recognizing and publishing promising writers from across the nation, and soondescant was an established literary voice. Since Colquitt’s retirement in the mid-1990s, the editors ofdescant have continued the tradition of publishing both emerging authors and established writers such as William Harrison, Clyde Edgerton, and Andrew Hudgins.

Dave Kuhne is the associate director of the TCU Center for Writing.



Daniel E. Williams is the chair of the TCU Department of English.



Charlotte Hogg is an associate professor of English at TCU.



Charlotte Willis, who holds a master’s in English from TCU, also contributed her editorial skills to the project.