The Southern Review is pleased to announce the appointment of Emily Nemens as coeditor and prose editor of this distinguished literary journal. Nemens, a Seattle native, was the search committee’s unanimous first choice.
“We so pleased to have Emily join our staff,” said LSU Press director MaryKatherine Callaway, who led the nation-wide search. “Her strong commitment to great writing, immense talent, creativity, and professionalism are exemplary of the high standards set by The Southern Review.” The author of a collection of short stories, Scrub, Nemens’s short fiction has appeared in The Gettysburg Review and on Esquire.com. As a student in LSU’s renowned MFA program, she won both nonfiction and poetry prizes, and received a grant to travel to Portugal to work on her novel-in-progress. She has participated in residencies at the Kerouac Project of Orlando and Denniston Hill, and has been recognized by Heeb magazine as a top Jew in the arts.
“I’m excited to have this opportunity,” said Nemens. “It is a privilege to help the journal continue to discover and promote engaging, relevant, and challenging literature.”
Nemens, who has an undergraduate degree in art and art history from Brown University moved to Louisiana from Brooklyn. While in New York she worked in editorial capacities at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she edited the teacher resource Painting Words, Sculpting Language: Creative Writing Workshops at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and at the American Institute of Architects. She also has experience working on oral history projects in Rhode Island, Louisiana, and at the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art. She previously served The Southern Review as editorial assistant.
An accomplished artist, Nemens collaborated with Harvey Pekar on a chapter in Studs Terkel’s Working: A Graphic Adaptation. Her illustration project, Women of the 112th and 113th, which features miniature watercolor portraits of all the women in the U.S. Congress, was profiled on MSNBC, Salon, Jezebel, and The Huffington Post.
Founded in 1935 by Robert Penn Warren and Cleanth Brooks, The Southern Review is published four times a year at LSU Press.