Three National Magazine Award Nominations

VQR once again scored big as the finalists for the National Magazine Awards were announced today in New York City. The awards, the Pulitzers of the magazine world, are sponsored by the American Society of Magazine Editors in association with the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

VQR picked up three nominations:

• General Excellence (circulation under 100,000)
• Single-Topic Issue for our Fall issue “South America in the Twenty-First Century”
• Photojournalism for Chris Hondros’s photo essay “A Window on Baghdad”

Literary magazines did very well this year, with Georgia Review, Paris Review, McSweeney’s, and New Letters all receiving nominations.

Highlights for us include a fourth consecutive nomination in the General Excellence category and nominations in two categories new to us: Single-Topic Issue and Photojournalism (this makes six different categories in which we’ve received nominations). And this adds up to thirteen nominations we’ve collected in the past four years, more than many larger and well-known publications including Time, Newsweek, The New Republic, Harper’s, Foreign Policy, Fortune, Mother Jones, The Nation, and Wired.

Ted Genoways, who took over as editor of VQR five years ago, adds that, “It’s remarkable what we’ve been able to accomplish given our modest size and financial resources. We have an annual budget that’s smaller than what Vanity Fair spends on their Oscar party and a staff of only five people, but we’ve been able to put out a magazine that is consistently among the best in the country.”

Ted also wants to give a shout out to Daniel Alarcón, co-editor of the South America issue, for all his work. “After we proposed the South America issue to Daniel, he really took the lead and made it happen. It was a great collaborative effort, but it would not have been possible without Daniel’s hard work. Most importantly, he was the one who continually insisted that this had to be a full issue, not just a section of the magazine. He convinced me at my moment of doubt—it was a late-night phone call, I remember—to hold back the issue by a quarter, in order to keep it a complete special issue. We pushed it back and developed the Iraq photography portfolio in its place. Two of our nominations came directly from that one conversation—and both of those issues were included our General Excellence nomination. I’m eternally grateful to Daniel for his unwavering belief in what was possible.” And more props to intern Honor Jones for all her work on the issue.

The National Magazine Awards will be presented on May 1 in New York City.