The Paris Review Names Vijay Seshadri as New Poetry Editor

The Paris Review has a new poetry editor! Vijay Seshadri will be the twelfth poetry editor in the magazine’s sixty-six-year history. The journal's announcement includes Seshadri's response to his hire:

“It is a wonderful and unique privilege to join the distinguished line of Paris Review poetry editors,” Seshadri said. “It is also an exciting privilege. All the questions that can be asked about poetry—about its form, purpose, scope—are more bristling and pressing now in America than they have been since the sixties. Anyone who loves the art should love the opportunity that the Paris Review poetry editorship offers to mediate the conversations between individual poets and the culture at large, especially in this watershed historical moment.”

Seshadri was named poetry editor after a year of guest poetry editors at The Paris Review: over the past four issues, four distinguished poets—Seshadri, Henri Cole, Shane McCrae, and Monica Youn—selected and edited the magazine’s poetry. The program was one of the first innovations of editor Emily Nemens, who was appointed in 2018. “The guest poetry editor program brought to the magazine the work of poets new to our pages and those for whom publication in the Review is a kind of homecoming,” Nemens said. “The dynamism of it was exciting, but I am also thrilled to grow the magazine’s poetry program with Vijay. Already he has demonstrated intelligence, enthusiasm, and empathy in his editing, and I know he’ll take the magazine’s poetry to new heights.”

We look forward to Seshadri's contributions to PR.