Conflicting tales: The unfolding tragedy at the VQR

Written By David McNair

Conflicting tales: The unfolding tragedy at the VQR

Nearly three months after Virginia Quarterly Review managing editor Kevin Morrissey took his own life, stories are still being penned about what the tragedy revealed about the troubled inner workings of the award-winning magazine: charges of favoritism, spiraling spending, poisonous tensions between staff members, and the hot-button suggestion that the magazine's editor, Ted Genoways, bullied the 52-year-old Morrissey in the last few weeks of his life.

Documents recently made available to the Hook show that Genoways was burning through VQR's endowment, hiring an intern for a key office role without going through the usual state procedures, and–- perhaps most surprisingly–- planning to take advantage of the intern-turned-employee's million-dollar-plus donation to another program to save his own struggling enterprise.

David McNair
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