Paul Reyes is the editor of the award-winning Virginia Quarterly Review, pound-for-pound one of the most dynamic literary magazines in the country. As editor he develops a variety of content, including investigative reporting, essays, photography portfolios, poetry, criticism, and fiction. He’s led the magazine to nine nominations for the National Magazine Award, winning twice—for General Excellence in 2019 and Best Illustrated Story in 2023. He’s also led VQR to two Overseas Press Club awards, as well as several inclusions in the Best American anthologies and Pushcart Prize anthology.

Prior to joining VQR, he was an editor with the Oxford American, where his essays and reporting appeared regularly. His writing has also appeared in VQR, Harper’s, the New York Times, Literary Hub, Mother Jones, Details, and the Mississippi Review. His work has earned him a Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a nomination for the Harry Chapin Media Award, and a nomination for the National Magazine Award in Feature Writing.

He’s served on several juries over the years for major prizes in literature and photography, and is currently serving on the Board of Directors for the American Society of Magazine Editors and the Board of Directors for MacDowell. He lectures on the nuts and bolts of magazine journalism and the creative-writing process, and has given talks on everything from trashing-out foreclosures to the generational power embedded in the empanada.

His book, Exiles in Eden, is an investigative narrative of the 2008 housing crisis, praised as “a wrenching chronicle of our new hard times” (Publishers Weekly) and “an engrossing memoir of American dreaming and financial devastation” (Mother Jones). 

He was once an actor, and aspires to return to it. He plays the guitar and gets by on the drums. He’s a regular at a place called Birdhouse. Aside from manuscripts, he’s currently reading Go Ahead in the Rain by Hanif Abdurraqib.