Prairie Schooner is a national literary magazine published quarterly at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln with the cooperation of UNL's English Department and the University of Nebraska Press. It is based in Lincoln, Nebraska and was founded in 1926 by Lowry Wimberly and a small group of his students, who together formed the Wordsmith Chapter of Sigma Upsilon (a national honorary literary society). The magazine is currently in its 81st year of publication.

Although many assume it is a regional magazine, it is nationally and internationally distributed and publishes writers from all over the United States and the world.
Prairie Schooner's current editor is Hilda Raz, a Professor of English and Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Recent special issues have focused on ekphrastic poetry and poetry and prose on Yidishkayt.
Prairie Schooner has garnered reprints and honorable mentions in the Pushcart Prize anthologies and various of the Best American series, including Best American Short Stories, Best American Essays, Best American Mystery Stories, and Best American Nonrequired Reading.

Notable contributors

• Jacob M. Appel

• Joseph Payne Brennan

• Charles Bukowski

• Robert Olen Butler

• Truman Capote

• Raymond Carver

• Judith Ortiz Cofer

• Rita Dove

• Richard Foerster

• Marilyn Hacker

• Honoree Fanonne Jeffers

• Jesse Lee Kercheval

• Ted Kooser

• Lee Martin

• Joyce Carol Oates

• Sharon Olds

• Alicia Ostriker

• Lori Ostlund

• Octavio Paz

• Robert Peters

• Carol Potter

• Alberto Rios

• Mari Sandoz

• Susan Fromberg Schaeffer

• Tim Schaffert

• Enid Shomer

• R.T. Smith

• Eudora Welty

• Tennessee Williams

• Jim Thompson

• Chris Ware--cover

Bibliography

• Stewart, Paul R., The Prairie Schooner Story: A Little Magazine's First 25 Years (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1955)

See also

• List of literary magazines