NEW YORK – Monday, February 25, 2019 — Rea Hederman, the publisher of The New York Review of Books, announced today that Emily Greenhouse and Gabriel Winslow-Yost have been named co-editors of the magazine, the leading English-language journal of literary criticism and ideas with a worldwide circulation of approximately 150,000. The editors will be joined by longtime contributor Daniel Mendelsohn in the newly created position of editor at large.

“Robert Silvers and Barbara Epstein launched the Review in 1963 to create a new outlet for robust ideas, and it became a home for the liveliest minds of their age,” said Hederman. “Gabe and Emily are about the age that Bob and Barbara were when they created the Review, and I fully expect that their partnership will bring its own fresh youth and energy. They both worked closely with Bob, so they know the values of the institution, and will bring to the position the impressive expertise they have developed in the years since: Emily at a number of different publications, most recently The New Yorker, and Gabe here at the Review, where he has thrived as a senior editor, and as co-editor of our New York Review Comics imprint. I’m confident they will bring in perspectives that will help to refresh the paper to meet the needs of our tumultuous moment, all while continuing to publish the outstanding writers and thinkers that have given the Review its clout and editorial vision.”

“I am honored to be returning to the Review, my first professional home in New York,” said Greenhouse, 32, who has spent the past three years working as managing editor of The New Yorker magazine. “Bob and Barbara set an electrifying template; the work upon us now is to reinvigorate their original model and usher it into the current age—by continuing to provide a forum for the Review’s extraordinary, dynamic contributors, and by identifying and developing diverse and incisive new voices. I’m simply thrilled to be facing this next chapter with Gabe and Daniel.”

Winslow-Yost, 33, is a senior editor at The New York Review. “It’s been a privilege to work at the Review for the past decade,” he said. “The magazine is in a position of strength, with a brilliant, experienced editorial staff, an unparalleled group of contributors, and wonderfully engaged readers. The commitment to passionate, thoughtful debate inculcated by Bob Silvers and Barbara Epstein is needed now more than ever. I couldn’t be more excited to help bring that into a new era and to new audiences, and to do that alongside Emily and Daniel.”

“The appointment of Emily and Gabe, brilliant young editors steeped in contemporary literary culture and sharing a broad vision of what a lively intellectual journal can achieve, actually returns the Review to its founding stance,” said Mendelsohn. “I was privileged to know and work closely with both Bob and Barbara, and now I’m excited to be working with the new editors on ideas about how to bring the Review’s extraordinary pool of talent—both longtime contributors and new voices—to a wider audience.” Mendelsohn added that the new editorial team has been discussing plans for a festival, regional and international colloquia, podcasts, and greater outreach to colleges and universities.

THE ROBERT B. SILVERS FOUNDATION
A bequest by Silvers, who died in March 2017, established a charitable entity, the Robert B. Silvers Foundation, the aim of which is to support writers. Silvers named Mendelsohn as director with Hederman as president.

The Foundation’s goal is to support writers working in the areas that were nurtured by Silvers in the Review: in-depth political, social, economic, and scientific commentary, long-form arts and literary criticism, and the intellectual essay. Such support will take the form of disbursements to enable works in progress, and of the bestowal annually of a series of prizes, to be known as the Silvers-Dudley Prizes, recognizing outstanding achievement in the kinds of writing Silvers and his late partner, Lady Grace Dudley, embraced and encouraged: the Robert B. Silvers Prize for Journalism; the Robert B. Silvers Prize for Criticism; and the Grace Dudley Prize for Writing on European Culture. Prizes awarded will be $30,000 each for writers over 40, and $15,000 each for those under 40. Winners will be named each year on December 31, Silvers’s birthday.

The first prizes will be awarded at the end of 2019.

HISTORY
In 1963, a group of friends founded a publication that they determined would be a new kind of magazine, one in which the most interesting and lively minds they could find would discuss current books and issues in depth. The friends—Jason and Barbara Epstein and Elizabeth Hardwick and Robert Lowell—asked Robert Silvers to join with Barbara Epstein to be the co-editors of the new publication.

The result was what The New Yorker called “the best first issue of any magazine ever” with contributions by, among others, W.H. Auden, Elizabeth Hardwick, Gore Vidal, Susan Sontag, Mary McCarthy, Adrienne Rich, and John Berryman.

In recent years contributors have included, among others, Michael Chabon, Zadie Smith, Mary Beard, Hilary Mantel, Marilynne Robinson, J.M. Coetzee, Joan Didion, Darryl Pinckney, and Mark Danner.

PUBLICITY
For more information, please contact Nicholas During at (212) 293-1641 / nduring@nybooks.com.

Emily Greenhouse, 32, has worked as managing editor of The New Yorker since March 2016. Previously, she worked as a reporter at Bloomberg, covering gender and politics. From 2012 to 2014, she worked as editorial assistant to David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker. From 2011 to 2012, she served as editorial assistant to Robert Silvers, the editor and cofounder of The New York Review of Books. Prior to that, she worked on the editorial staff of Granta in London and taught English in Paris.

She has written for publications including The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Dissent, The Nation, and The New Republic, on subjects ranging from anti-Semitism in France to rock and roll criticism to drug experimentation at liberal arts colleges to the television show Gossip Girl. She has appeared on Charlie Rose and Entertainment Tonight.

Greenhouse graduated from Wesleyan University in 2008, with a double major in the College of Letters (an interdisciplinary program of literature, history, and philosophy) and French Studies. She is currently the youngest member of the Wesleyan University Board of Trustees. She lives in Brooklyn and is expecting her first child in March.

Gabriel Winslow-Yost, 33, has been on the editorial staff of The New York Review of Books since 2009, first as an editorial assistant to Robert Silvers, then as an assistant editor, and most recently as a senior editor. He also co-founded the New York Review Comics imprint, which has published fifteen comics and graphic novels since 2016. His writing on film, fiction, comics, and video games has appeared in The New York Review of Books, Harper’s, The New Yorker, n+1, and New York magazine’s The Cut.

Winslow-Yost graduated from Yale University in 2008 with a degree in English. He was born in New Hampshire, and lives in Brooklyn.

Daniel Mendelsohn was born in New York in 1960 and received a BA in Classics from the University of Virginia and a Ph.D. in Classics from Princeton University. Since 1991 he has been a prolific contributor of essays, reviews, and articles to many publications, particularly The New York Review of Books and The New Yorker. He has also been a columnist for The New York Times Book Review, Harper’s, Travel + Leisure, and New York magazine, where he was the weekly book critic.

His books include An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic (2017); The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million (2006), winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the National Jewish Book Award in the United States and the Prix Médicis in France; The Elusive Embrace: Desire and the Riddle of Identity (1999), a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year; two collections of essays; a scholarly study of Greek tragedy; and a two-volume translation of the poetry of C. P. Cavafy (2009). His third collection of essays, Ecstasy and Terror: From the Greeks to Game of Thrones, will be published in October 2019. Mendelsohn is the Charles Ranlett Flint Professor of Humanities at Bard College.