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Established in 1971  through the urging of Charles Aukema, the Coe Review replaced Caravan, the former Coe (only) literary magazine as a dual venue for superior work from the newly established Coe Writers' Workshop and from established outside writers. The idea was to place emerging Coe writers alongside established writers in a roughly 50/50 mix. Although this ratio has fluctuated, sometimes wildly depending on the snobbery or lack of it of a given year's editorial staff, the ratio tends to even out over the years.

The key word has always been "experimental." We don't aspire to be just another "safe" college literary magazine. We always look for the "quirky," "strange," and "new." Often we get work from established writers who can't place their most original work anywhere else.

Because of our proximity to the Iowa Writers' Workshop (28 miles south) and because Paul Engle, a Coe graduate, founded the Iowa Writers' Workshop in its present form, we have been the first publication of  a number of Iowa Workshop graduates, among them Chris Offutt, Pimone Triplett, Doug Larson, Tim Flanagan, and a host of others. Occasionally, we'll reprint the killer stuff from writers like Robert Coover, T. Coraghessan Boyle, William Vollmann, James Tate, Eavan Boland, James Galvin, Sarah Lindsay, ZZ Packard....