June 1, 2021 Bulletin Announcing Our Summer Issue By The Paris Review Issue no. 237 of The Paris Review is here for your summer reading! The Summer 2021 issue, online today, features interviews with Arundhati Roy and Roz Chast; fiction by Adania Shibli and five emerging writers; the first English translation of a monologue by Vladimir Nabokov; poetry by Kaveh Akbar, George Bradley, and Ada Limón; an essay on tennis by Joy Katz; and art by Elizabeth Ibarra paired with an essay by Aimee Nezhukumatathil—and, of course, much more! “I’m grateful for the lessons one learns from great writers, but also from imperialists, sexists, friends, lovers, oppressors, revolutionaries—everybody. Everybody has something to teach a writer,” Arundhati Roy tells managing editor and interviewer Hasan Altaf in the Art of Fiction No. 249. Roy, the author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction—including the 1997 Booker-winning novel The God of Small Things, 2017’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, and the 2019 essay collection My Seditious Heart—describes the singular pleasure of losing herself in novel writing, with detours along the way to discuss her architecture-school days in New Delhi and her time spent reporting in the forests of Bastar. “I love immersing myself in the universe of a novel for years,” she says. “There is never a time when I am more alive … Being in that universe, that imperfect universe, is like being in prayer.” “I don’t think a cartoon is just an illustration of a funny idea. The drawing style has to go along with the words, and be funny also,” Roz Chast tells Liana Finck in the Art of Comics No. 3. Chast, a longtime contributor to The New Yorker and the author of works such as 2014’s National Book Critics Circle Award–winning Can’t We Talk about Something More Pleasant?, considers how words and pictures “are conjoined twins. They’re interconnected in a primary way. When I was at art school, and a painter, I missed the words, and when I write, I miss drawing.” Also in this issue: fiction by Anuk Arudpragasam, Camille Bordas, Lydia Conklin, Kenan Orhan, and Christina Wood, and poetry by Jennifer Barber, Charles Baudelaire, Marianne Boruch, Daisy Fried, Ishion Hutchinson, John Kinsella, Michael Klein, Jim Moore, Jesse Nathan, Barbara Tran, and Matthew Zapruder. Enjoy! And don’t forget to subscribe for full access to both the Summer 2021 issue and our complete sixty-eight-year archive.
April 28, 2021 Bulletin Watch a Conversation between Eloghosa Osunde and Akwaeke Emezi By The Paris Review Every year, the Paris Review Board of Directors gives awards to recognize remarkable contributions to literature. One of these, the Plimpton Prize for Fiction, is a $10,000 award that celebrates an outstanding story published by an emerging writer in the magazine in the previous calendar year. The winner of the 2021 Plimpton Prize for Fiction is Eloghosa Osunde, for her story “Good Boy,” which appeared in the Fall 2020 issue. In commemoration of this year’s Plimpton Prize, we’re presenting a taped conversation between Osunde and the artist and writer Akwaeke Emezi, introduced by managing editor Hasan Altaf. The video, which appears below, will be available to stream on our YouTube channel from April 28 to May 11. And don’t forget: readers are also invited to stream a special free screening of PBS’s American Masters documentary N. Scott Momaday: Words from a Bear, which will be available until Friday, April 30. Momaday is the recipient of the 2021 Hadada Award, presented each year to a “distinguished member of the writing community who has made a strong and unique contribution to literature.”
April 12, 2021 Bulletin N. Scott Momaday Will Receive Our 2021 Hadada Award; Eloghosa Osunde Wins Plimpton Prize By The Paris Review Every year, the Paris Review Board of Directors gives awards to recognize remarkable contributions to literature. This year, the directors are celebrating two extraordinary writers and taking special steps to ensure the future of exceptional writing. Read on to learn about the ways we are celebrating this year. Read More
March 23, 2021 Bulletin Announcing the Next Editor of The Paris Review By The Paris Review Emily Stokes. Photo: Taryn Simon. The board of The Paris Review Foundation, which publishes the literary quarterly The Paris Review, is pleased to announce the appointment of Emily Stokes as the next editor of The Paris Review. She will be the sixth editor in the sixty-eight-year history of the magazine. Ms. Stokes joins from The New Yorker, where she has been a senior editor since 2018. Ms. Stokes was also an editor at T: The New York Times Style Magazine, Harper’s Magazine, and the Financial Times. She is a graduate of Cambridge University and was a Kennedy Memorial Trust scholar at Harvard. “Emily will honor the Review’s tradition of discovery,” says Mona Simpson, the publisher of The Paris Review. “I believe she’ll publish distinctive work in a distinctive way, with courage, subtlety, and style.” “Like many readers, I came to The Paris Review through its interviews, which show writing to be the hard, inspiring work that it is,” Ms. Stokes says. “Over the years the Review has introduced me to new and established writers who have provided the most pleasurable kind of company. After a year in which we have been alone and driven mad by the news, the Review’s mandate, to publish ‘the good writers and good poets, the non-drumbeaters and the non-axe-grinders,’ is a timely calling, and I am tremendously excited and grateful for this opportunity.” Read More
March 3, 2021 Bulletin A Message from the Board of Directors By The Paris Review The Paris Review, a literary quarterly based in New York, announced that its editor, Emily Nemens, has resigned to pursue work on her second novel. In her statement, published today on The Paris Review’s website, Nemens said, “The Paris Review’s mission has always been a dual one: to provide a platform for great literature, and to inspire readers with ambitious new writing. I’m proud that we’ve been able to accomplish both during my time at the Review, and I would like to thank the writers, readers, and colleagues on staff and the board who have collaborated with me toward these objectives.” The Paris Review, founded in 1953, features original fiction and nonfiction, art, and in-depth interviews with notable writers about their creative processes. Under Nemens’s leadership, the quarterly won awards and attained a record number of subscribers. The Review also has an active digital presence with a large following, and has recently produced two seasons of podcasts featuring readings, interviews, and archival material. At the time of Nemens’s departure, issue no. 236 has just appeared, and Nemens’s editorial work on the Summer 2021 issue, no. 237, has been completed. The Paris Review is undertaking an active search for her successor. “While we will miss Emily,” said co-presidents Matt Holt and Akash Shah, “we have a wonderful staff, and the magazine has never been in better shape financially. We are all very excited about the next chapter.” “We are grateful for Emily Nemens’s editorial stewardship of The Paris Review during the past three years,” said publisher Mona Simpson. “In particular, we thank Emily for her leadership guiding the staff through the anxieties and sorrows of the pandemic. We are excited for her new work and wish her every happiness.” Read a letter from Emily Nemens.
March 3, 2021 Bulletin Letter from the Editor By The Paris Review Read a message from the board of directors. The Paris Review’s mission has always been a dual one: to provide a platform for great literature, and to inspire readers with ambitious new writing. I’m proud that we’ve been able to accomplish both during my time at the Review, and I would like to thank the writers, readers, and colleagues on staff and the board who have collaborated with me toward these objectives. The project of the Review is an ongoing one—seven decades strong—but over the past three years, I’m particularly proud of a few accomplishments: I’m thrilled to see the quarterly at record high circulation, and that the work we publish in its pages has been recognized by peers, including the 2020 American Society of Magazine Editors’ Award for Fiction and the 2021 volume of Best American Poetry, which will include five poems from TPR. Collaborating on the poetry program with Vijay Seshadri was a joy, and I’m eager for readers to explore Poets at Work, an anthology that Vijay edited, when it arrives next month. I’m glad that we are able to support writers early in their careers—few things please me more than an emerging writer landing a book deal off of the strength of their Paris Review story—and concurrently give space to voices I have admired for decades. The Writers at Work interview series is a national treasure, and shepherding conversations with writers like Suzan-Lori Parks, Nathaniel Mackey, and George Saunders into print was a singular privilege. More readers are finding us online—on the Daily, via newsletters, and on social media—than ever before, with thanks to our great digital team. We made a second season of the podcast and already have some aces in the hole for season three. And while we hosted some good parties and programs in the Before Times, even more readers found us through recent virtual events. Some accomplishments behind the scenes: We began an institutional giving program, with a mind toward building a broader network of philanthropic and government support. We opened digital submissions and began a virtual reader program, offering mentorship and professional development to a nationwide group of volunteer readers. And I’m glad that we were able to create a safe, stable, and creative workplace for TPR’s staff through an unprecedented global crisis. I hope the magazine continues to thrive, through the stressful conditions of the ongoing pandemic and into brighter days ahead. In his “Letter to an Editor,” in the Review’s first issue, William Styron considers the writer’s duty: “He must go on writing, reflecting disorder, defeat, despair, should that be all he sees at the moment, but ever searching for the elusive love, joy, and hope—qualities which, as in the act of life itself, are best when they have to be struggled for.” The quest Styron describes is not just for expatriate writers of the Silent Generation—it’s an editor’s job, too. From our offices in Chelsea, and, since last March, from an apartment in the East Village, I have sought love, joy, and hope to share on these pages. Yesterday we welcomed the Spring issue, no. 236, into the world, and now, with my work on the Summer issue complete, I am leaving The Paris Review to write my next book. Hopefully, eventually, I’ll edit again—connecting writers to readers is among the world’s best professions. Through it all I will keep seeking out those elusive qualities and sharing them as best I can. —Emily Nemens Read a message from the board of directors.