The headquarters of The Paris Review moved from Paris to New York City in 1973. Plimpton edited the Review from its founding until his death in 2003. Brigid Hughes took over as "executive editor" (she declined to use the title "editor" out of respect for Plimpton)[3] from 2003 to 2005.[4] She was followed by Philip Gourevitch from 2005 to 2010, Lorin Stein from 2010 to 2017,[5] and Emily Nemens from April 2018 until March 2021, when Emily Stokes was named editor.[6][7]
History
An editorial statement, penned in the inaugural issue by William Styron, stated the magazine's aim:[8]
The Paris Review hopes to emphasize creative work—fiction and poetry—not to the exclusion of criticism, but with the aim in mind of merely removing criticism from the dominating place it holds in most literary magazines. […] I think The Paris Review should welcome these people into its pages: the good writers and good poets, the non-drumbeaters and non-axe-grinders. So long as they're good.
The Review's founding editors include Humes, Matthiessen, Plimpton, William Pène du Bois, Thomas Guinzburg and John P. C. Train. The first publisher was Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan. Du Bois, the magazine's first art editor, designed the iconic Paris Review eagle to include both American and French significance: an American eagle holding a pen and wearing a Phrygian cap.
The first-floor and basement rooms in Plimpton's 72nd Street apartment became the headquarters of The Paris Review when the magazine moved from Paris to New York City in 1973.
Brigid Hughes took over as editor following Plimpton's death in 2003; her last issue was March 2005. She was succeeded by Philip Gourevitch in spring 2005.[4] Under Gourevitch's leadership, the Review began incorporating more nonfiction pieces and, for the first time, began regularly publishing a photography spread. A four-volume set of Paris Review interviews was published by Picador from 2006 to 2009. Gourevitch announced his departure in the fall of 2009, citing a desire to concentrate more fully on his creative writing.[9][10][11]
In 2007, an article published by The New York Times supported the claim that founding editor Matthiessen was in the CIA but stated that the magazine was used as a cover, rather than a collaborator, for his spying activities.[12] In a May 27, 2008 interview with Charlie Rose, Matthiessen stated that he "invented The Paris Review as cover" for his CIA activities.[13] Matthiessen maintained that the Review was not part of the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF), an organization used by the CIA to sponsor an array of literary magazines; but the record shows The Paris Review benefited financially from selling article reprints to CCF magazines.[14]
Lorin Stein was named editor of The Paris Review in April 2010. He oversaw a redesign of the magazine's print edition and its website, both of which were met with critical acclaim.[15][16][17] In September 2010, the Review made available online its entire archive of interviews.[18][19] On December 6, 2017, Stein resigned amid an internal investigation into his sexual misconduct toward women at the workplace.[20]
In October 2012, The Paris Review published an anthology, Object Lessons,[21] comprising a selection of twenty short stories from The Paris Review's archive, each with an introduction by a contemporary author. Contributors include Jeffrey Eugenides (with an introduction to a story by Denis Johnson), Lydia Davis (with an introduction to a story by Jane Bowles), and Ali Smith (with an introduction to a story by Lydia Davis).[22]
On October 8, 2012, the magazine launched its app for the iPad and iPhone.[23] Developed by Atavist, the app includes access to new issues, back issues, and archival collections from its fiction and poetry sections—along with the complete interview series and the Paris Review Daily.[24]
In late 2021, for the first issue with Stokes as editor-in-chief and Na Kim as art director, the journal was given a redesign by Matt Willey of Pentagram that hearkened back to the look that it had in the late 1960s and early 1970s: a minimalist style, a cover with a sans serif font and a great deal of white space, a smaller trim size, and paper that was physically softer.[27]
Aisha Sabatini Sloan is an emerging writer with a monthly column, "Detroit Archives". The series explores her family history through iconic landmarks in Detroit.[28]
Interviews
"The interviews in The Paris Review […] are about as canonical, in our literary universe, as spoken words can be. They long ago set the standard […] for what well-brewed conversation should sound like on the page."
An interview with E. M. Forster — an acquaintance of Plimpton's from his days at King's College, Cambridge — became the first in a long series of author interviews, now known as the Writers at Work series.
The series, suspended after George Plimpton's death in 2003, was relaunched in 2012 with a print by Donald Baechler.
Prizes
Three prizes are awarded annually by the editors of The Paris Review: the Paris Review Hadada, the Plimpton Prize, and the Terry Southern Prize for Humor. Winning selections are celebrated at the annual Spring Revel. No application form is required. Instead, winners are selected from the stories and poems published the previous year in The Paris Review.
The Plimpton Prize: $10,000 (and an engraved ostrich egg) awarded for the best work of fiction or poetry by an emerging or previously unpublished writer. Recent winners include Caitlin Horrocks, Wells Tower, Alistair Morgan, Jesse Ball, Emma Cline, and Benjamin Percy.
The Terry Southern Prize for Humor: a $5,000 award honoring work from either The Paris Review or The Paris Review Daily that embodies the qualities of humor, wit, and sprezzatura. The prize is given in memory of longtime contributor Terry Southern.[31]
Spring Revel
The Paris Review Spring Revel is an annual gala held in celebration of American writers and writing.[32][33] The Revel "brings together leading figures and patrons of American arts and letters from throughout New York to pay tribute to distinguished writers at different stages of their careers".[34] Proceeds from the Spring Revel go directly toward The Paris Review Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization established by the co-founders in 2000 to ensure the future of The Paris Review.
The 2010 Spring Revel took place on April 13, 2010 and presented Philip Roth with the Hadada.[35]
William Clark Styron Jr. was an American novelist and essayist who won major literary awards for his work.
Philip Milton Roth was an American novelist and short-story writer. Roth's fiction—often set in his birthplace of Newark, New Jersey—is known for its intensely autobiographical character, for philosophically and formally blurring the distinction between reality and fiction, for its "sensual, ingenious style" and for its provocative explorations of American identity. He first gained attention with the 1959 short story collection Goodbye, Columbus, which won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. Ten years later, he published the bestseller Portnoy's Complaint. Nathan Zuckerman, Roth's literary alter ego, narrates several of his books. A fictionalized Philip Roth narrates some of his others, such as the alternate history The Plot Against America.
George Ames Plimpton was an American writer. He is known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review, as well as his patrician demeanor and accent. He was known for "participatory journalism," including accounts of his active involvement in professional sporting events, acting in a Western, performing a comedy act at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, and playing with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and then recording the experience from the point of view of an amateur.
Jamaica Kincaid is an Antiguan-American novelist, essayist, gardener, and gardening writer. She was born in St. John's, Antigua. She lives in North Bennington, Vermont and is Professor of African and African American Studies in Residence at Harvard University during the academic year.
Aharon Appelfeld was an Israeli novelist and Holocaust survivor.
The Underground Literary Alliance is a Philadelphia-based and internationally membered group of writers, zinesters and DIY writers. They seek to expose what they see as the corruption and insularity in the American book-publishing establishment while providing alternative avenues for writers who don't easily fit into mainstream institutions and agendas.
Peter Matthiessen was an American novelist, naturalist, wilderness writer, zen teacher and onetime CIA agent. A co-founder of the literary magazine The Paris Review, he is the only writer to have won the National Book Award in both nonfiction and fiction. He was also a prominent environmental activist.
Harold Louis Humes, Jr. was known as HL Humes in his books, and usually as "Doc" Humes in life. He was the originator of The Paris Review literary magazine, author of two novels in the late 1950s, and a gregarious fixture of the cultural scene in Paris, London, and New York in the 1950s and early 1960s.
Philip Gourevitch, an American author and journalist, is a longtime staff writer for The New Yorker and a former editor of The Paris Review.
Shakespeare and Company is an English-language bookstore opened in 1951 by George Whitman, located on Paris's Left Bank.
Robert Benjamin Silvers was an American editor who served as editor of The New York Review of Books from 1963 to 2017.
Robie Mayhew Macauley was an American editor, novelist and critic whose literary career spanned more than 50 years.
Jean Babette Stein was an American author and editor.
Wells Tower is an American writer of short stories, non-fiction, feature films and television. In 2009 he published his first short story collection, Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned to much critical acclaim. His short fiction has also been published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, McSweeney's, Vice, Harper's Magazine, A Public Space, Fence and other periodicals. In 2022, he wrote the screenplay for the feature film Pain Hustlers, starring Emily Blunt and directed by David Yates, which was bought by Netflix for $50 million.
Lorin Hollister Stein is an American critic, editor, and translator. He was the editor in chief of The Paris Review but resigned in 2017 following several anonymous accusations of sexual impropriety. Under Stein's editorship, The Paris Review won two National Magazine Awards—the first in the category of Essays and Criticism (2011), and the second for General Excellence (2013).
Thomas Henry Guinzburg was an American editor and publisher who served as the first managing editor of The Paris Review following its inception in 1953 and later succeeded his father as president of the Viking Press.
Jonathan Dee is an American novelist and non-fiction writer. His fifth novel, The Privileges, was a finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Plimpton! Starring George Plimpton as Himself is a 2013 American documentary film directed by Tom Bean and Luke Poling about the writer George Plimpton, who was a co-founder of The Paris Review and contributor to the participatory journalism genre.
My First Time is an ongoing short web series, featuring authors discussing their first published book.
Brigid Hughes is a New York City-based literary editor. Hughes is best known for succeeding George Plimpton as the editor of the literary magazine The Paris Review after his death in 2003 and for founding the literary magazine A Public Space in 2006.
↑ Matthiessen, Peter (May 27, 2008). "The Charlie Rose Show". 15:30–15:41 of interview. Archived from the original on July 8, 2008. Retrieved September 14, 2008. I went there as a CIA agent, to Paris... I invented The Paris Review as cover.
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