Emily Nemens is an American writer, editor and illustrator. From April 2018 to March 2021 she served as the editor of ''

The Paris Review ''The Paris Review'' is a quarterly English-language literary magazine established in Paris in 1953 by Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen, and George Plimpton. In its first five years, ''The Paris Review'' published works by Jack Kerouac, Philip ...

''.

Life and education

Born in

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

, Nemens studied art history and studio art at

Brown University Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...

. At

Louisiana State University Louisiana State University (officially Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, commonly referred to as LSU) is a public land-grant research university in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The university was founded in 1860 nea ...

she received a degree in

creative writing Creative writing is any writing that goes outside the bounds of normal professional, journalistic, academic, or technical forms of literature, typically identified by an emphasis on narrative craft, character development, and the use of literary ...

Career

Nemens is an alumna of the Kerouac Project writing residency in Orlando, Florida, where she completed a short-story collection called “Scrub.” Nemens worked as an editor at the

Center for Architecture The Center for Architecture is located in the neighborhood of Greenwich Village at 536 LaGuardia Place, between West 3rd Street and Bleecker Street in Manhattan, New York City. The center was designed by architect Andrew Berman and completed ...

and the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

in New York. In Louisiana, she worked at ''

The Southern Review ''The Southern Review'' is a quarterly literary magazine that was established by Robert Penn Warren in 1935 at the behest of Charles W. Pipkin and funded by Huey Long as a part of his investment in Louisiana State University. It publishes fiction ...

'' and became its co-editor. In April 2018, then still widely unknown in the New York literary scene, she was appointed editor of ''

'' by a five-person committee composed of Susannah Hunnewell, Akash Shah, Jeanne McCulloch,

Jeffrey Eugenides Jeffrey Kent Eugenides (born March 8, 1960) is an American novelist and short story writer. He has written numerous short stories and essays, as well as three novels: ''The Virgin Suicides'' (1993), ''Middlesex'' (2002), and'' The Marriage Plot'' ...

, and

Mona Simpson Mona Simpson (née Jandali; June 14, 1957) is an American novelist. She has written six novels and studied English at the University of California, Berkeley and Languages and Literature at Columbia University. She won a Whiting Award for her fi ...

. She succeeded

Lorin Stein Lorin Hollister Stein (born April 22, 1973) is an American critic, editor, and translator. He was the editor in chief of '' The Paris Review''Dave Itzkoff (March 5, 2010)"Paris Review Names New Editor" ArtsBeat, '' The New York Times''. but resi ...

, who had resigned after allegations of sexual harassment. She was the second woman to lead the ''Review'' (after

Brigid Hughes Brigid Hughes is a Brooklyn, New York-based literary editor. Hughes is best known for assuming the executive editor role at literary journal ''The Paris Review'' after the death of founding editor George Plimpton and for founding the literary ma ...

, who eschewed the official "editor" title out of respect for her predecessor, and the journal's founder, the late

George Plimpton George Ames Plimpton (March 18, 1927 – September 25, 2003) was an American writer. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found ''The Paris Review'', as well as his patrician demeanor and accent. He was also known for " ...

). In March 2021, she wrote that she was leaving the magazine to write her next book.

Work

Nemens has published poetry, fiction and essays in '' n+1'', ''

Esquire Esquire (, ; abbreviated Esq.) is usually a courtesy title. In the United Kingdom, ''esquire'' historically was a title of respect accorded to men of higher social rank, particularly members of the landed gentry above the rank of gentlema ...

'' and ''

The Gettysburg Review ''The Gettysburg Review'' is a quarterly literary magazine featuring short stories, poetry, essays and reviews. Work appearing in the magazine often is reprinted in "best-of" anthologies and receives awards. The little magazine "is recognized ...

''. As an illustrator, she has obtained a large following for her watercolor portraits of female politicians on

Tumblr Tumblr (stylized as tumblr; pronounced "tumbler") is an American microblogging and social networking website founded by David Karp in 2007 and currently owned by Automattic. The service allows users to post multimedia and other content to a sho ...

. Nemens published her debut novel, '' The Cactus League'', in 2020.

External links

*
Nemens's illustrations
on Tumblr

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Nemens, Emily Living people American magazine editors Women magazine editors American illustrators 21st-century American women writers 21st-century American novelists Year of birth missing (living people) American women illustrators Writers from Seattle Artists from Seattle Novelists from Washington (state) 21st-century American painters 21st-century American women artists Painters from Washington (state) Brown University alumni Louisiana State University alumni