Zyzzyva (magazine)

Zyzzyva is a triannual magazine of writers and artists. It places an emphasis on showcasing emerging voices and never before published writers in addition to the already established. Based in San Francisco, it began publishing in 1985. ZYZZYVA's slogan is "The Last Word," referring to "zyzzyva", the last word in the American Heritage Dictionary. A zyzzyva is an American weevil. The accent is on the first syllable.

Editors
The founder was Howard Junker. He retired from the magazine in 2010 and named Laura Cogan as editor-in-chief. In 2023, Managing Editor Oscar Villalon became editor in chief, the third editor in the publication's history.

Awards
Work from the magazine has received the Pushcart Prize and the O. Henry Award and has been included in The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Nonrequired Reading.

Notable Contributors
Notable contributors include Haruki Murakami, Peter Orner, Kay Ryan, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, David Guterson, Tom Bissell, Tatjana Soli, Ron Carlson, Luis Alberto Urrea, Amy Hempel, D.A. Powell, Matthew Dickman, Herbert Gold, Daniel Sada, Adam Johnson, Karl Taro Greenfeld, Richard Misrach, Aimee Bender, Diego Enrique Osorno, Sherman Alexie, Daniel Handler, Adrienne Rich, Robert Hass, Czeslaw Milosz, Wanda Coleman, Raymond Carver, Tom Barbash, William T. Vollmann, Sandow Birk, Kate Folk, Sean Gill, Fabián Martínez Siccardi, Dagoberto Gilb, Ed Ruscha, Richard Diebenkorn, Ursula K. Le Guin, Robert Creeley, and M.F.K. Fisher.

Novels
Boonville, by Robert Mailer Anderson was a "Zyzzyva First Novel", published in 2001 by the Creative Arts Book Company.