2009 National Magazine Awards

The 2009 National Magazine Awards have been particularly kind to literary magazines and their writers. Here are some, I think, notable finalists:

• For General Excellence (under 100,000 circ.): The American Scholar and Virginia Quarterly Review;
• For Essays: The Antioch Review for Maureen McCoy’s “Vickie’s Pour House: A Soldier’s Peace“;
• For Fiction: The American Scholar for Charles Baxter’s “Royal Blue” and Jim Shepard’s “Happy with Crocodiles,” The New Yorker for Roberto Bolano’s “Clara” (along with 3 other story nominations for the magazine), The Paris Review for Alistair Morgan’s “Departure” and Damon Galgut’s “The Lover,” and Virginia Quarterly Review for Sana Krasikov’s “Asal” and Kanishk Tharoor’s “Tale of the Teahouse“;
• For General Excellence Online (less than 1,000,000 monthly visitors): Triple Canopy.

If anything comes out of these nominations, I hope it is more recognition for the fantastic work being done at Triple Canopy. Better than most online publications, they work with the Internet medium (as opposed to treating it like a print medium), resulting in some fantastic issues to date.