Paris Review Names Emily Nemens New Editor

The New York Times reports that the Paris Review has chosen a new editor to take the helm: Emily Nemens. Nemens comes to the publication from the Southern Review, where she served as a co-editor. The decision, as NYT explains, "is a surprising choice for a publication so closely tied to the New York literary world," as "Ms. Nemens, who lives in Baton Rouge, La., and has been a co-editor of The Southern Review since 2013 [...] takes the helm at a challenging moment in the journal’s history, several months after its previous editor, Lorin Stein, resigned under a cloud of sexual harassment allegations." More from there: 

Ms. Nemens’s eclectic taste and creative ambitions proved to be a draw for the Paris Review board, which chose Ms. Nemens over a pool of candidates better known in New York’s literary circles. Ms. Nemens will begin her new job on June 1.

“Her literary tastes, her accomplishments, the combination of her work ethic and her sense of collaboration — both with her writers and her staff — make her a really unique package of talent,” said Akash Shah, a Paris Review board member who led the search for a new editor. “This is someone who is on a steep trajectory, and The Paris Review is going to benefit from that.”

In a statement, the magazine’s publisher, Susannah Hunnewell, cited Ms. Nemens’s “proven track record for finding diverse new voices outside of established networks.”

In an interview, Ms. Nemens, 34, said she hoped to bring “a spirit of collaboration” that will empower the staff. She added that she wanted to continue the quarterly’s relationships with writers it has published in the past while also finding new voices.

“The meritocratic approach that I’ve had in my editing practice so far, I’ll bring that,” she said.

Despite The Paris Review’s relatively small size — it has 11 full-time staff members and a paid circulation of around 23,000 — it looms large in the publishing world and has played a significant part in shaping American literary culture. Since its founding in 1953, the magazine has helped to start the careers of writers like Jack Kerouac, Edward P. Jones, Philip Roth, Ann Patchett, Adrienne Rich, Lydia Davis and Denis Johnson.

Learn more at the New York Times.