In the past three years, the Virginia Quarterly Review has grown from an unknown publication to a prestigious award winning literary magazine.
Recently VQR was nominated for six National Magazine Awards, or "Ellies" as they are nicknamed. No other magazine was nominated for more awards and the VQR won two of them beating out magazines like The Atlantic Monthly, Vanity Fair and Harpers Weekly.
One award was for General Excellence with under 100,000 circulation and the other was in fiction writing.
Editor-in -chief Ted Genoways, who took over his current position three years ago, compared the Ellie's to the Pulitzer Prize. Since he took over, Genoways said the magazine's circulation has increased from 3,500 to around 6,000, and last year the magazine was first nominated for the Ellies.
Since his involvement, the magazine has undergone a format change. Genoways said he wanted to focus on moving past the typical quarterly format of "black lettering on white paper." Now, aside from a more colorful layout, the magazine focuses on art and photography and has a more "international perspective," Genoways said.
The upcoming issue will feature three pieces on Serbia including a report on location. In addition, Genoways said the VQR is now receiving unsolicited contributions to the magazine thanks to its growing popularity.
"Agents are sending in the work of young writers," Genoways said. But he stressed that it is important that they "continue to be aggressive about seeking out good work."
Recently, Powells.com has featured the VQR book reviews as part of their Website. Georgie Lewis, a marketing specialist for Powells.com said that for now the reviews will be running through July but the VQR may come back at a later time. In addition, Lewis said Powells.com hopes to begin featuring VQR's reviews on "product pages" and have the magazine host an online "book self" which will be a selection of books hand picked by the magazine. Lewis said that she hopes this is "the beginning of a good, expansive, online relationship with [VQR]."
Plans have been made for The New York Times to possibly syndicate all or some of VQR's material in the future, according to Genoways. Mainly he hopes that the VQR continues expanding and improving in an effort to make "every issue a bit better than the one before."
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