This past summer Meghan O’Rourke was appointed editor of The Yale Review.

In an award citation the Whiting Foundation praised her “far-reaching and ambitious” work, and noted that her “voice stands out for its power and originality.” She is the author of the memoir The Long Goodbye (2011) and the poetry collections Once (2011), Halflife (2007), and Sun In Days (2017), which The New York Times named one of the 10 Best Poetry Books of the year. Her essays and poems have appeared in magazines such as The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, and Poetry. She has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Radcliffe Fellowship, a Whiting Award, a Lannan fellowship, two Pushcart Prizes, the May Sarton Poetry Prize, the Union League Prize from the Poetry Foundation, and a Front Page Award for her cultural criticism. She has taught at New York University, Princeton, and The New School, and is currently completing a book about chronic illness.

I met with Meghan in her new, bare-walled office in New Haven. It was her very first day on the job, working in the office that is. Among other things we talked about the history of The Yale Review, bridging disciplines, current events, criticism, the Paris Review in its heyday, magazines as spawning grounds for books, re-designs; private experiences with print and the pleasures of being immersed in reading; book designer Chip Kidd; Pentagram; book collecting, broadsides, and much more.