Jake Silverstein (born 1975 in California) is an American writer and magazine editor. He is the editor-in-chief of The New York Times Magazine and the author of Nothing Happened and Then It Did, a novelized memoir.

Early life

Silverstein was raised in Oakland, California, the elder of two children.[1] His mother was a psychoanalyst and his father an architect.[1] He attended Wesleyan University[2] where he majored in English, and later earned an M.A. in English from Hollins University[1] and then an M.F.A. from the University of Texas at Austin's Michener Center for Writers[3] in 2006.[4] He was a Fulbright scholar in Zacatecas, Mexico, in 2002.[4]

Career

After graduating from college, Silverstein interned at Harper's in 1998, continued at the magazine for a year as a fact-checker,[4] then moved to The Big Bend Sentinel in Marfa, Texas in 1999.[1]

Silverstein was the editor of Texas Monthly from 2008 to 2014, during which time the magazine won four National Magazine Awards in 12 nominations.[1][5] Under his tenure, the magazine had a circulation of approximately 300,000 and rising revenue, in contrast to many similar publications in the same period.[1] He became the editor of The New York Times Magazine in May 2014,[1] since which time the magazine has been a finalist for 14 National Magazine Awards and has won four. In 2017, the magazine story "The Fighter" was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing.

He is the author of the hybrid memoir-novel Nothing Happened and Then It Did, which he wrote during his M.F.A. program[4] and published in 2010[6] with W.W. Norton & Company.[7][8]

1619 Project

As editor-in-chief of the New York Times Magazine, Silverstein has played a role in the 1619 Project, a view of the role of slavery in the history of the United States. The project has come under criticism from historians, including Sean Wilentz, Allen C. Guelzo, Victoria E. Bynum, James M. McPherson, Gordon S. Wood, Richard Carwardine and Clayborne Carson who argue the project contains factual inaccuracies and distortions in attributing slavery a central role in the American Revolution.[9] Silverstein has disputed those claims.[10] The author's essay for the project won a Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 2020, while the project itself has won many other honors.[11]

Personal life

He is married to archivist Mary LaMotte Silverstein, with whom he has two sons.[1]

References