The following was sent out from The New York Times‘ Gilbert Cruz, Tina Jordan and Juliana Barbassa:
We are excited to announce that Neima Jahromi will be joining The New York Times Book Review as our newest preview editor. Since 2011, Neima has worked at The New Yorker as one of the magazine’s rigorous fact-checkers while writing on topics as wide-ranging as video games, the periodic table and unionization efforts at Medieval Times (in verse, no less!). His broad knowledge, boundless curiosity and deep affection for books, authors and ideas make him a perfect fit here at the Book Review.
Neima grew up in the San Francisco Bay area and attended Reed College in Portland, Ore., where he studied French, German and English literature. After dipping a toe briefly into the law, and completing internships at The Nation and The Week, Neima landed at The New Yorker, where he worked with writers such as Jill Lepore, Kelefa Sanneh, Louis Menand, Adam Gopnik, Margaret Talbot and Alex Ross, among others, and wrote lots of freelance book reviews.
As a preview editor, Neima will help to shape our nonfiction coverage — deciding which books should be reviewed and then matching them with the perfect reviewer. He will join the Book Review on April 17.
We also have some exciting internal moves to announce.
We’re thrilled that MJ Franklin has been promoted to preview editor. During his time on the desk, he has made a name for himself as a thoughtful, astute editor, working with both emerging writers and well-known literary names as he assigns reviews of fiction and nonfiction titles, including many hidden gems.
Before joining the Book Review, MJ worked on The Times’s social media team. And before coming to The Times, he worked as an editor at Mashable, where, among many other responsibilities, he hosted the site’s online book club and its podcast, “MashReads.”
Finally, we’re delighted to announce that Emily Eakin will be promoted to senior editor.
Now, as a senior editor, Emily will take a step back from assigning scores of reviews to focus even more on this kind of coverage, looking thematically at the world of books and assigning longer, knottier, more hard-hitting pieces.
Before joining the Book Review, Emily worked as a senior editor at The New Yorker; a culture reporter at The New York Times, where she covered intellectual politics and scholarly debate; a fashion features writer at Vogue; and a deputy editor of Lingua Franca magazine. She is working on a book about the postwar French philosophers and their outsize influence on American culture.
Please welcome Neima and offer your congratulations to MJ and Emily.
— Gilbert, Tina and Juliana