Paris Review

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The Paris Review, which is actually based in New York, is a literary magazine which began in Paris in 1953. The founding editors were William Pène du Bois, Thomas H. Guinzburg, Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen, George Plimpton and John P. C. Train. The first publisher was Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, and the current publisher is Drue Heinz. Plimpton was the publication's editor until his death in 2003. The Paris Review's editorial staff has always been focused on the publication's quality, and its mission is to promote the literary arts. In the debut issue, one of the first advisory editors, William Styron, wrote in an introductory letter to readers:

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.

Although never profitable, The Paris Review has published work by and interviews with a remarkably diverse and distinguished array of international writers and poets - some Nobelists, some now forgotten, and some up-and-coming.

Author interviews include Chinua Achebe, Anna Akhmatova, J. G. Ballard, Samuel Beckett, Joseph Brodsky, Italo Calvino, Elias Canetti, Simone de Beauvoir, Isak Dinesen, E. M. Forster, Athol Fugard, Gabriel García Márquez, Nadine Gordimer, Henry Green, Graham Greene, Seamus Heaney, P. D. James, Philip Larkin, Ian McEwan, Paul Muldoon, Haruki Murakami, Les Murray, Vladimir Nabokov, V. S. Naipaul, Harold Pinter, Junichiro Tanizaki, Marina Tsvetaeva and Derek Walcott.

American authors interviewed include Nelson Algren, James Baldwin, Elizabeth Bishop, Paul Bowles, Christopher Browne, William Burroughs, Truman Capote, Raymond Carver, Ralph Ellison, Allen Ginsberg, Ernest Hemingway, Jack Kerouac, Malcolm Lowry, Norman Mailer, Mary McCarthy, Marianne Moore, Ezra Pound, Adrienne Rich, Philip Roth, Terry Southern, Kurt Vonnegut, Eugene Walter and John Edgar Wideman.

Contemporary fiction writers and poets, both traditional and experimental, include Ai, Donald Antrim, Alessandro Baricco, Rick Bass, Jim Carroll, Jeffrey Eugenides, Mohsin Hamid, Daniel Kehlmann, Michael McFee, Lorrie Moore, Rick Moody and Brenda Shaughnessy. The Paris Review back issues section official website provides a more extensive list.

During Plimpton's lifetime, The Paris Review was also well-known for wild parties at his New York apartment overlooking the East River on East 72nd Street. These parties were attended (or crashed) by many an aspiring young writer or editor. Following Plimpton's death, the journal (a 501(c)(3) nonprofit since 2000) has been governed by a Board of Directors. The contract of the first editor to succeed Plimpton, Brigid Hughes, was not renewed. The circumstances which caused Hughes contract to go unrenewed have not been made generally known. On March 18, 2005, it was announced in the New York Times that the Board appointed a new editor, the writer Philip Gourevitch, author of We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families (1998), a groundbreaking study of the genocide that occurred in Rwanda in 1994.

1 The Paris Review publications
2 Prizes
3 Notes
4 External link

[edit] The Paris Review publications

The Paris Review Book of People with Problems (Picador, 2005)
The Paris Review Book for Planes, Trains, and Waiting Rooms (Picador, 2004)
The Paris Review Book of Heartbreak, Madness, Sex, Love, Betrayal, Outsiders, Intoxication, War, Whimsy, Horrors, God, Death, Dinner, Baseball, Travel (Picador, 2004)
Latin American Writers at Work (The Modern Library, 2003)
Playwrights at Work (The Modern Library, 2000)
Beat Writers at Work (The Modern Library, 1999)
The Writers Chapbook (The Modern Library, 1999)
Women Writers at Work (Random House, 1998)

[edit] Prizes

The magazine's editors announce these prizes in the winter issue, with winners selected from stories and poems published in the Paris Review in a given year:^[1]

Plimpton Prize — $5000 awarded for the best work of fiction or poetry by an emerging or previously unpublished writer.

Aga Khan Prize for Fiction — $1000 awarded for the best short story.

Bernard F. Connors Prize for Poetry — $1000 awarded for the finest poem over 200 lines.

Paris Review Hadada — a bronze statuette to be "awarded annually to a distinguished member of the literary community who has demonstrated a strong and unique commitment to the craft of writing." The award may go to a writer, reader, editor, publisher, publication, or organization.