A Note from the Editor

As readers will have noted, with this issue of New England Review we are pleased to add some new names to our masthead. Joining us as web editor is J. M. Tyree, who was first acquainted with NER as an undergraduate at Middlebury College twenty years ago, and who in the interim has appeared in our pages as a contributor of fiction and nonfiction, as well as a staff reader. He’ll be posting to the site frequently, and in early 2012 will roll out a new feature of online writings by NER authors. Christopher Ross, who has also served as a reader for NER, joined us last spring to coordinate the NER Vermont Reading Series. This new quarterly series features four Vermont writers four times a year, bringing together writers from all over the state to share their work in various public venues. Our editorial panel and readers have grown to include some new names as well, and we continue to be grateful for their hard work on behalf of NER.

At this time of year it also gives us particular pleasure to recognize some recent honors awarded to contributors whose work has appeared in our pages. Our website and e-newsletter will keep you up to date on their accomplishments and publications throughout the coming months, but I would like to take this occasion to acknowledge several notable honors our authors have received.

In September 2011, New England Review co-founder and recent contributor Sydney Lea (32.2) was named the Vermont Poet Laureate. At the same time, the Vermont Arts Council and Governor Shumlin awarded Julia Alvarez (21.1) the 2011 Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts.

The 2012 edition of the Pushcart Prize anthology, published this fall, recognizes various works from our pages. Patrick Phillips’s poem “A Spell Against Gods” (31.2) is a prize-winner this year, and two stories, Castle Freeman’s “The Next Thing on Benefit” (31.1) and Elizabeth Schulte’s “The Space Between the Rows” (31.1), received special mention.

The “Best American” annual collections have also recognized some writings that first appeared in our pages. Kevin Young selected Jennifer Grotz’s “Poppies” (31.1), Eric Pankey’s “Cogitatio Mortis” (31.1), and Natasha Trethewey’s “Elegy” (30.4) for inclusion in Best American Poetry 2011. Best American Short Stories 2011 noted fiction from NER among its “distinguished stories” of the year: Kirstin Allio’s “Green” (31.3), Thomas Gough’s “The Evening’s Peace” (30.4), Beth Lordan’s “A Useful Story” (31.1), and Christine Sneed’s “Interview with the Second Wife” (31.4). Best American Travel Writing 2011 cited Eric Calderwood’s “The Road to Damascus” (31.3) in its list of “Notable Travel Writing of 2010.”

In addition, Christine Sneed’s “The First Wife” (31.4) was chosen for inclusion in PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2012, to be published in May by Anchor Books.

Several NER contributors won significant fellowships this year as well. Gregory Spatz, whose work appears in this issue, received a 2012 Literature Fellowship in Fiction from the National Endowment for the Arts. Spatz first appeared in NER in 1992 (14.2). NER contributors in translation Ross Benjamin (Friedrich Hölderlin, 28.4) and Geoffrey Brock (Umberto Saba, 25.1 & 2) have won 2012 NEA Literature Fellowships for Translation Projects.

Chase Twichell (30.2) won the $100,000 Kingsley Tufts Award, sponsored by Claremont Graduate University, for her book Horses Where the Answers Should Have Been (Copper Canyon Press). Eduardo C. Corrall (30.4) was among the recipients of this year’s Whiting Writers Awards, which are given annually to ten emerging writers in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and plays. The awards, of $50,000 each, are based on accomplishment and promise.

Other NER authors winning significant prizes for their writing this year include the following: Melinda Moustakis (32.1) was named by the National Book Foundation one of its 2011 “5 Under 35,” an honor that acknowledges notable fiction writers under the age of thirty-five. Moustakis also won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction for her collection...