A BRIEF HISTORY OF PEARL MAGAZINE
by Joan Jobe Smith
Lucky Me: PEARL! One of the wonderful gems in my life: my PEARL literary magazine I nacre-manced in 1973 with the generosity of California State University Long Beach Honors Program grants and artisan extraordinaire David Scott who designed layout and logo and helped me name PEARL Pearl after Janis (AKA Pearl) Joplin, someone we both admired.
My first two all-women issues (Spring 1974 and Fall 1974), with the advice of my new poetry pal and mentor Charles Bukowski, included some of America’s prominent female poets: Lyn Lishfin, Rochelle Holt, Ann Menebroker and Linda King (Bukowski’s then-sweetheart) – and included as well newbie poet par excellence, first-rate artist and future friend and co-editor Marilyn Johnson.
Issue #3, Spring 1975, featured Charles Bukowski’s poetry (plus a Polaroid of him in a waterbed w/Linda King) and #4, slated as a raucous-iconoclastic Male Chauvinist Pig parody of the mid-1970s’ War Between the Sexes – had I not run out of funds – would’ve included Anais Nin, with whom I’d developed an enthusiastic literary friendship, and Henry Miller. Lucky for me, my personal pearl shined nacre-gem-bright once again in 1986 when Marilyn Johnson bought a PC and eagerly volunteered her genius techno know-how and artistic wizardry to help me reprise PEARL.
Now, in 2012, Marilyn and I can proclaim that PEARL, produced, sans grants, with personal penny-pinching and prodigious patrons for nearly 40 years (27 continuously) has become the longest-running litmag in Long Beach, California, and one of the longest-running independent literary journals in the United States – and maybe the world, publishing an eclectic word-jewelry collection of writers that has included first-time poets to Poet Laureates Billy Collins and Delaware’s JoAnn Balingit.

This year, we celebrated our 45th issue featuring the outstanding poet Clint Margrave and #46, an all-fiction issue featuring the winner of our annual short story contest, Irene Keliher. In 1989, we established our annual Pearl Prize, which includes publication and a monetary prize (now $1,000) – and we can gratefully praise our distinguished list of judges Ed Ochester, Dorianne Laux, Suzanne Lummis, Gerald Locklin, Frank Gaspar, Ann Menebroker, Robert Peters, Denise Duhamel, Lisa Glatt, David Hernandez, Donna Hilbert, Jim Daniels, Fred Voss et al for their expert selection of some of the finest contemporary emerging and established writers in the English language to win the coveted Pearl Prize.
Marilyn Johnson and I look forward to continuing to many more wonderful years as co-pearl divers. Visit us online at pearlmag.com.