Harper’s Magazine announced earlier this month that Benjamin Moser will begin writing the magazine’s New Books column in the May issue. Moser succeeds author and critic John Leonard, who took over the writing of the column from Guy Davenport, who died in 2005. Leonard passed away last November.
“New Books, as written by Guy Davenport and John Leonard, was never less than a tour de force,” said Roger Hodge, editor of Harper’s, in a press release. “Guy and John were both writers with unmistakable voices who invariably were able to comprehend a month's worth of fresh titles and find the elegant patterns of significance that tied them all together. Ben has the same kind of mind and an equally strong style.”
“Ben brings with him a breadth of knowledge and an array of interests that are nothing short of tremendous,” said senior editor Jennifer Szalai, who oversees the magazine’s Reviews section.
Moser, born in Texas and currently living in the Netherlands, has contributed to the New York Review of Books and Condé Nast Traveler, among other journals. He has translated the work of authors such as Elie Weisel, Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza, and Bernard-Henri Lévy, and his first book of nonfiction, Why This World, a biography of Brazilian novelist and short story writer Clarice Lispector, is forthcoming in August from Oxford University Press.
