The literary dark horse

Meghan O’Rourke in Slate:

060317_hb_vqrcover2006l01Over the past two days, New York media gossip turned away from its usual concerns—like Graydon Carter’s latest hairdo—to consider an improbable question: What is the Virginia Quarterly Review? On March 15, the nominations for the annual National Magazine Awards—the Oscars, if you will, of the magazine world—were announced. To the astonishment of glossy magazine types everywhere, a small journal in Virginia garnered not one nomination, as is sometimes politely handed down to such journals, but six. This made the Virginia Quarterly Review the second-most-nominated magazine, behind the Atlantic, which received eight, and ahead of The New Yorker, Harper’s, New York, and National Geographic, all of which received five. It was as if a scrappy farm team had demolished the Yankees in an exhibition game.

More here.  Some of you may remember that 3 Quarks Daily editor Morgan Meis published an essay about his adventures in Vietnam last year, in the last issue of VQR, so we at 3QD were already well aware of the quality of this journal! See Morgan’s essay in VQR here. Still, we congratulate them!