Alumni News

This is How a Woman is Erased from her Job

After taking over from George Plimpton, Brigid Hughes was pushed out as editor of The Paris Review and omitted from the magazine’s history. When news broke that Loren Stein, the editor at The Paris Review, had resigned after abusing his power with women writers and staff, Allison Devers MFA '08 set about fixing the magazine's masthead and the record.

Brigid Hughes

"Over time," she writes, "the effect of Hughes’ erasure calcified a false history of the magazine’s editorial lineage that did not include its first female editor. This impacts all women in the literary community who seek to be taken as seriously and as celebrated for their work as male colleagues and bosses, many if not most of whom dream of rising to the position of head editors of distinguished magazines. It also has the effect of continuing to perpetuate a mythology of the magazine as a boys’ club, led by men, where women do most of the heavy lifting under the managing editor title, and who are never given a true chance to be promoted to head editor."