Paul Reyes Named VQR Editor

Siva Vaidhyanathan, director of the Center for Media and Citizenship at the University of Virginia, announced today the appointment of Paul Reyes as editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review. Reyes, who joined VQR in 2012 and has served as deputy editor since 2013, is the tenth editor in the magazine’s ninety-two-year history.  

“Paul Reyes is an outstanding judge of quality work, has a clear sense of the mission and scope of VQR, and knows how to get the best work out of bright, emerging writers,” Vaidhyanathan said. “VQR is in talented, experienced hands and will continue to publish some of the best fiction, journalism, photography, and poetry in the world.” 

In his time with VQR, Reyes has edited a broad range of content—including long-form narrative nonfiction, fiction, essays, poetry, and criticism—with a focus on sustaining the magazine’s reputation for excellence in international reporting. Reyes’s contributions include curating various photographic portfolios as well as building VQR’s first front-of-the-book section. Reyes also oversees the magazine’s art direction. 

Before joining VQR, Reyes was a senior editor with the Oxford American magazine from 2002 to 2009. His writing earned him a National Magazine Award nomination in Feature Writing in 2009 and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in Literature in 2010. His articles have appeared in VQR, the Oxford American, Harper’s, the New York Times, and Mother Jones. Work he has edited for VQR has earned National Magazine Award nominations in Reporting and Feature Photography, an Overseas Press Club award and citation, and has been included in several Best American anthologies.

In addition, Reyes is the author of Exiles in Eden: Life Among the Ruins of Florida’s Great Recession (Holt, 2010), a chronicle of literary reportage on the housing crisis, told from the perspective of the homeowners, agents, activists, and others who composed the “crisis ecosystem” that formed around the foreclosure epidemic in 2008 and 2009. 

Reyes holds an MFA in Fiction from the University of Florida.

“To call this an honor is an understatement,” Reyes said. “VQR has long been a publication where the giants of literature have felt right at home with breakthrough talent finding a new audience. And I take these responsibilities—of cultivating new talent, of preserving a space where writers can work according to their vision instead of obeying the lanes of the marketplace—very seriously.”

In 2016, VQR moved under the auspices of the Center for Media and Citizenship in the College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Virginia. This move will allow VQR to work more closely with the faculty and students of the College. And it will allow VQR to collaborate with the mission and activities of the College. 

“Perhaps the best part of working at VQR is being able to indulge your impulses as a passionate generalist, of nurturing a personal commitment to such seemingly disparate disciplines as poetry, photography, international reporting, and science. To me the disparities are a matter of form, not a matter of intent. So for a literary general-interest magazine to play a leading role in the Center’s dialogue on media and citizenship makes perfect sense. It’s going to be an exciting time for all of us.”