Shenandoah: The Washington and Lee University Review (shenandoahliterary.org) is pleased to announce the appointment of William Wright as assistant editor. Wright, a poet, teacher and independent editor, has served for two years as a contributing editor to the journal, and in his new capacity he will be responsible for assignment of reviews and recommended readings and will work closely with the editor on special issues and art design.
Wright is the author of four full-length volumes of poetry, including Tree Heresies (forthcoming) and Night Field Anecdote (2011), as well as several chapbooks. He is series editor and volume co-editor of the multi-volume The Southern Poetry Anthology from Texas Review Press and has already ushered into print volumes on Georgia, Mississippi, The Appalachians and others. Wright is currently co-editing Hard Lines: Rough South Poetry (USC Press) and is founding editor of the web-based Town Creek Poetry.
His own poems appear in The Kenyon Review, Five Points, The Oxford American and others. Holder of a Ph.D. from The University of Southern Mississippi, Wright currently teaches at the University of West Georgia.
Of Wright, Shenandoah editor R. T. Smith says, “Will brings a rare combination of enthusiasm and experience to this position. He’s a resourceful and meticulous editor, and I respect his poetry and critical prose, as well as his understanding of publicity and the aesthetic space of the internet. He’s already my most active and trusted adviser, and it seems only fair to acknowledge him with this title. Anyone curious about his imagination and scholarship and the grace of his expression can find both his poems and reviews in our archives, as well as many other publications.”
Wright will assume his new responsibilities by working on the spring 2015 issue of Shenandoah, currently in the developmental stages.
Shenandoah was founded as a print quarterly in 1950 by W&L students and faculty and has included work by J. R. R. Tolkein, James Merrill, Seamus Heaney, Ezra Pound, Flannery O’Connor, Natasha Trethewey and Joyce Carol Oates. It continues to provide readers with fiction, poetry, essays, reviews, interviews and an assortment of contests and an active blog. It became a bi-annual digital journal in 2011.