Maintaining a quarterly schedule (March, June, September, December), it offers fiction, memoirs, poetry, essays and criticism to a readership of 10,000.

[1] The magazine was launched in 1980[2] after Lesser (then 27 years old with no editing experience) was a guest editor of Ron Nowicki's San Francisco Review of Books.

She found the experience so rewarding that she decided to create her own publication, and the first issue of The Threepenny Review appeared three months later.

Other essays tackle unexpected topics—music and pain, Dylan’s worst song, the placebo effect—with insight and lucidity.

[5]Authors published in the magazine include Jacob M. Appel, André Aciman, John Berger, Wendell Berry, Frank Bidart, Eavan Boland, Roberto Bolaño, Jane Bowles, Robert Olen Butler, Anne Carson, T. J. Clark, Henri Cole, Lucille Lang Day, W. S. Di Piero, Mark Doty, Margaret Drabble, Geoff Dyer, Deborah Eisenberg, Paula Fox, Dagoberto Gilb, Sean Gill, Louise Glück, Charlie Haas, Donald Hall, Seamus Heaney, Tony Hoagland, Louis B. Jones, A. L. Kennedy, August Kleinzahler, Gideon Lewis-Kraus, Philip Levine, Phillip Lopate, David Mamet, Greil Marcus, Paul Muldoon, Sigrid Nunez, Kenzaburō Ōe, Cynthia Ozick, Dale Peck, Adam Phillips, Robert Pinsky, Atsuro Riley, Kay Ryan, Oliver Sacks, Lucy Sante, Mark Sarvas, Elizabeth Tallent, Amy Tan, James Tate, Tony Tulathimutte, Gore Vidal, Lawrence Weschler, Rachel Wetzsteon, Frederick Wiseman, Dean Young, and Adam Zagajewski.