Georgia Review Included in Anthology

If you read this blog regularly you know that one subject I come back to with monotonous regularity is The Georgia Review, the award-winning literary journal published by the University of Georgia.

I am a huge fan of the Review and the small but extremely talented staff that are the force behind the publication’s success. Within the last 21 years the Review has taken home two National Magazine Awards, the industry equivalents of the Oscars©—a phenomenal feat when one considers that the little old Review is perennially up against such behemoths as The New Yorker, Esquire, Harper’s and The Atlantic.

Recently, while reading my copy of Columns, the UGA newspaper for faculty and staff, I came across a small article about another success for the Review.

Here is that article, from the November 19 (Vol. 35, No. 17) Columns:

The Georgia Review, the internationally distributed literary quarterly published at UGA since 1947, has been honored by inclusion in The Best American Magazine Writing 2007 anthology, compiled by the American Society of Magazine Editors and published by Columbia University Press.

The Georgia Review’s contribution to this volume is Michael Donohue’s “Russell and Mary,” which won the 2007 National Magazine Award in the essays category—beating out entries from The New Yorker, Smithsonian, Foreign Affairs and New Letters by such well-known authors as Paul Theroux, Thomas Friedman and Calvin Trillin.

“Russell and Mary” is an account of a Brooklyn renter who attempts to piece together the lives of his elderly landlady and her long-deceased husband using a box of personal effects the couple left behind. The essay was originally published in the Review’s special 60th-anniversary double issue (fall/winter 2006).

Best American Magazine Writing will be published in December, and is available for pre-order and purchase from Columbia University Press and all major retail and online booksellers.

--Reprinted with permission

It seems as though The Georgia Review is to be congratulated yet again on another feather in its cap. How much more of this can we take?

Seriously though, the Review is a shining beacon for Georgia letters; not because it publishes Georgia writers (although it certainly does feature many), but rather because it continues to bear testimony to the fact that Georgia is a place where letters are celebrated, encouraged, and even revered.

If you get the opportunity to see The Best American Magazine Writing 2007 (pictured above), take a look at Michael Donohue’s essay and let me know what you think. I welcome your feedback at covertocover@gpb.org.