Submission guidelines: Will the fallen VQR rise again?

For 86 years the Virginia Quarterly Review, UVA’s award-winning literary journal, had appeared on bookstore shelves and in mailboxes each season. But that publishing streak was threatened last summer when the magazine’s managing editor, 52-year-old Kevin Morrissey, took his own life. In a burst of violence and grief, the reputation of one of the nation’s oldest and most distinguished literary journals, along with that of the youthful editor who had lifted the magazine to new heights, appeared in tatters.

Eight months later, however, the magazine has managed to preserve its publishing streak, gotten nominated again for several National Magazine Awards, and has already won in the digital category for an interactive website about the war in Afghanistan.

Despite the cloud that had been hanging over VQR, the good news suggests things are back to normal.

Or are they? (read more)

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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.

Meanwhile, as the official UVA investigation into the management of the magazine continues (web update: the report was issued shortly after this story was posted), two recent stories have taken a different tack: casting Genoways, not Morrissey, as the hapless victim of a reckless rush to judgment. READ MORE

Tale of Woe: The death of the VQR’s Kevin Morrissey

On John Casteen’s last official day in office as the president of the University of Virginia, a tragic story, one fit for the pages of the award-winning literary journal that he nurtured, began to unfold.

That Friday, July 30, the managing editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review, 52-year-old Kevin Morrissey, took his own life. Since then, UVA has shrouded VQR behind a wall of silence, changing the office locks, launching an audit, and even routing all incoming telephone calls to the University’s public relations office.

A Hook investigation reveals that behind the staid, Thomas Jefferson-designed exterior of VQR’s headquarters swirl allegations of financial recklessness, conflicts of interest, and a bizarre pattern of management-by-email that drove a staffer to quit. Some say there was also a pattern of bullying that may have pushed a fragile man into tragic oblivion. READ MORE

The Chang effect: Wooing palates, breaking hearts— and why he left

Last fall, word that a famous Szechuan chef had quietly set up in Charlottesville had foodies salivating. There was a small newspaper mention and online chatter from groupies who track his every move, but after a March 1 story in the New Yorker, diners went into a feeding frenzy.

“We were surprised that it became so popular so fast,” says restaurant co-owner John Rong during a lunch time interview last week. “We noticed business going up after the story in the Hook, too, but when that story in the New Yorker come out…”

Indeed, sophisticated palates from Richmond and D.C. began making pilgrimages to Taste of China, where— even on cold winter evenings— lines could be seen snaking out onto the sidewalk of the north wing of Albemarle Square Shopping Center.

What was happening?

Read More

Waste Wars

cover-murf-1Way back in February of 2008 I wrote about Peter Van der Linde’s new state-of-the art recycling facility out at Zion Crossroads. Since then, the story has become quite interresting…a story about a man who may have a solution to our waste woes, the same man being sued by our own waste authority….

What a Waste: Is the trash Authority going obsolete?

Why is the main local trash authority suing the man who has offered a solution for the local waste disposal problem? And why is that man paying investigators to find out what words are spoken at the entrance booth of the authority’s favorite trash station?

It’s all part of an ongoing waste war. And before it ends, there’s a chance that the private citizen– unless he’s vanquished in court– may have beaten government at its own game.

Before you toss this newspaper in the recycling bin (we hope that’s what you’ll do after reading it), let’s talk trash with Peter Van der Linde.

A ‘real player’
“The landfill of the future just came to town,” says Van der Linde, a slender, soft-spoken man whose voice sounds not unlike a friendly wizard in a fantasy film, but although it might seem like magic, his new $11 million recycling facility near Zion Crossroads isn’t imaginary. It really does turn trash into cash.

“In the last seven years or so, these separation machines have really been perfected,” says Van der Linde. “I did a lot of research on them, and I believe this one I bought is the ultimate machine.”

Inside a 100,000-square foot steel-framed building, one of three such structures on the site, a 15-man crew is running a state-of the-art recycling machine, a $3.2 million device that can sort up to 100 tons of construction and demolition debris and curbside recyclables per hour. (more)

Wasted revenue? Authority realized in 2005 station didn’t track origins

As reported in a recent cover story [“What a Waste: Is the trash Authority going obsolete?”], there’s a waste war raging with distrust, lawsuits, and even spying.

The Rivanna Solid Waste Authority is suing Peter Van der Linde, who recently opened a major recycling facility in Zion Crossroads (right next to the RSWA-sponsored facility), to retrieve millions in fees the outspoken hauler allegedly avoided paying by lying about the origins of his trash. However, Authority documents recently obtained by the Hook show that the Authority may have been fleeced by its own partner in trash. (More)

Recycle this! Van der Linde steps up tone

Recycling entrepreneur Peter Van der Linde, who opened an $11 million state-of-the-art recycling facility in Zion Crossroads last December, recently did a round of local radio interviews, drawing attention once again to his ongoing legal battle with the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority, which has filed a $3.5 million lawsuit against him.

“If this doesn’t bother you, nothing will,” declared former Republican City Councilor Rob Schilling on his WINA radio program, saying he was “disgusted” by the Authority’s action against Van der Linde. “It’s wrong in every single way.” (More)
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