Athens, Ga. – The Georgia Review, the renowned literary quarterly published at the University of Georgia, has been named a finalist in this year’s National Magazine Awards competition. The honor is for Michael Donohue’s essay “Russell and Mary” from the Fall/Winter 2006 special sixtieth-anniversary issue. The other finalists in the essay category are from The New Yorker, Foreign Affairs, Smithsonian and New Letters.
The awards were established in 1966 by the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME), based in New York City, and the judging is conducted in association with the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
According to ASME, the competition recognizes magazines that “consistently demonstrate superior execution of editorial objectives, innovative editorial techniques, noteworthy journalistic enterprise and imaginative design.”
The winners will be announced at a May 1 ceremony at Lincoln Center in New York.
Since 1985, The Georgia Review has been a National Magazine Awards finalist sixteen times, winning once in the fiction category. In addition to being a double-digit finalist in fiction, the journal has been recognized several times in the areas of essays and criticism, and in 1989 it was a finalist in the single-topic issue category for “The Kingdom of Kitsch in American Culture.”
This year’s nominated essay, “Russell and Mary,” is a moving meditation on memory, character and the ways in which the imagination can and cannot recreate that which is lost. Shortly after renting a Brooklyn apartment, Donohue discovers a large box of personal effects left behind by the long-deceased owner of the building, Russell, whom he never met. Russell’s elderly wife, Mary, oversees the building, but she too soon dies and leaves no heirs. Donohue is left to puzzle over the contents of the box-a lifetime of letters, drawings, newspaper clips and more-in an attempt to learn more about the couple, and eventually about what it may mean to create and leave behind a life. “Russell and Mary,” a unique work, is funny, sad, provocative-and always humanely sensitive and moving.
Donohue, a teacher at St. Ann’s School in Brooklyn, New York, previously published an essay-review, “It’s Only Rock-and-Roll,” in the Spring 2000 issue of The Georgia Review. He is currently on leave from St. Ann’s and living in Beijing with his wife.
The Georgia Review, published quarterly since 1947, offers short fiction, poetry, essays, book reviews and visual art in every issue. The journal has been the recipient of over forty GAMMA Awards, given by the Magazine Association of the Southeast, in such diverse categories as best fiction, best essay, best feature, best cover, best photography and general excellence. Selections from The Georgia Review are frequently reprinted in anthologies such as The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses, Best American Poetry, Best American Short Stories, Best American Essays, and The O. Henry Awards: Prize Stories. Harper’s, The Utne Reader and other magazines have also featured work initially published in The Georgia Review.
Excerpts from the nominated essay, as well as photographic and cover images, are available. Contact The Georgia Review at 706/542-3481 or garev@uga.edu.
