The American Society of Magazine Editors announced yesterday the finalists for the 2008 National Magazine Awards. The annual awards, also known as the Ellies, honor print and online magazines "that consistently demonstrate superior execution of editorial objectives, innovative editorial techniques, noteworthy journalistic enterprise, and imaginative design." Among the 128 finalists in twenty-five categories were the usual titles—the New Yorker led the finalists with twelve nominations—but a number of literary magazines are also in the running.
McSweeney's, the Paris Review, and Zoetrope: All Story were named finalists in the fiction category, along with Harper’s Magazine and the New Yorker. The Virginia Quarterly Review took away three nominations, in the categories of photojournalism; single-topic issue, for its Fall 2007 "South America in the 21st Century" issue; and general excellence for magazines with a circulation under 100,000, along with the Georgia Review.
New Letters, a quarterly magazine published by the University of Missouri, Kansas City, is a finalist in the essays category, where it's up against such heavy-hitters as the Atlantic, ELLE, Entertainment Weekly, Harper's Magazine, and the New Yorker.
The winners will be announced at a gala on May 1 at Lincoln Center in New York City.
