UVA announced yesterday that a new publisher and deputy editor are joining the staff of its award-winning literary journal. Jon Peede, former director of literature grants for the National Endowment for the Arts, will take on the role of publisher at the Virginia Quarterly Review, and Donovan Webster, a journalist and former senior editor for Outside Magazine, will be the magazine’s new deputy editor.
The VQR masthead has looked pretty bare since the events of last fall, when staff resignations and reappointments following the suicide of managing editor Kevin Morissey left editor Ted Genoways the journal’s only full-time staff member. UVA’s subsequent financial and managerial audit of VQR, which “found no specific allegations of bullying or harassment” against Genoways, said that organizational changes to the journal would be forthcoming.
UVA also announced that the latest of these changes includes the establishment of a VQR advisory board, to "advise on matters such as organizational structure, editorial vision, thematic content, and business growth models for VQR." The board includes:
- Marie Arana, writer-at-large, Washington Post; former editor in chief of Washington Post Book World; National Book Award finalist.
- Larry Bridges, chief executive of Red Car Inc.; filmmaker and poet.
- Jon Fine, director of author and publisher relations, Amazon.
- David Griffin, visuals editor, Washington Post; former executive editor for e-publishing and director of photography, National Geographic.
- Joe Hutchinson, art director, Rolling Stone.
- Jay Morse, former chief financial officer, Washington Post.
- Amy O’Leary, deputy news editor, The New York Times.
- Siva Vaidhyanathan, chair, department of media studies, UVA.
For more background on VQR’s latest hires, check out Genoway’s announcement on the VQR blog.