The latest edition of Humanitas, a column focused on the arts and humanities at Yale, presents a significant award for The Yale Review, an exhibit pairing two highly significant collections of African American cultural history, Rome Prize honorees, a "monumental" article, and Yale's resident expert on the history of opera curtains.
For more, please visit an archive of all arts and humanities coverage at Yale News.
The Yale Review takes home a top fiction prize
The Yale Review - a cultural and literary journal that has published work by leading writers, poets, and critics for more than two centuries - won the 2026 National Magazine Award for Fiction at a New York City prize ceremony on May 19. The award, given annually by the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME), honors magazines and websites for excellence in the publication of fiction, as demonstrated by three examples of short fiction.
The Yale Review was recognized for the stories "An Angel Passed Above Us" by Hungarian Nobel Prize-winner László Krasznahorkai (translated by John Batki), a grim tale about the war in Ukraine draped in techno-optimism; "The Rabbit's Foot" by Sigrid Nunez, about a New York hotel worker who was found abandoned as an infant with only the titular item in her hand; and "What Are We Doing, What Have We Done" by Nathan Englander, about an expectant father's struggle with climate anxiety.
"Winning the ASME Award for Fiction… is a thrilling recognition of what a small, ambitious magazine can do," said editor-in-chief Meghan O'Rourke. "The Yale Review has long believed that literary fiction is essential cultural work, not a luxury, and that conviction shows in the writers we publish: a Nobel laureate alongside two of the most distinctive American voices working today. Our editors, our student readers, and our fact-checkers have just accomplished a historic feat through sheer dedication and hard work."
This is the second National Magazine Award for The Yale Review; it previously won the 2024 General Excellence Award in Literature, Science and Politics, and was a finalist in that category this year. Among this year's awardees in other categories were The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, The Atlantic, and National Geographic.
Curtain call
The New York Times recently reported on the unveiling of new stage curtains at London's Royal Opera House and looked to Yale's Gundula Kreuzer for some historical context.
Kreuzer, a professor of music in Yale's Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the department chair, specializes in the history and theory of opera. As the Times noted, her 2018 book, "Curtain, Gong, Steam: Wagnerian Technologies of Nineteenth-Century Opera," includes a 54-page chapter on the history of opera curtains.
The red velvet curtains replaced at the Royal Opera House were adorned with the royal cipher of the late Queen Elizabeth II. The new curtains bear a logo designed for King Charles III.
Curtains have hung at opera performances since the early 1600s, Kreuzer said; early on, when the show began, they either dropped to the floor or were hoisted upward, rather than parting to the sides. In the 19th century, she added, composers began incorporating instructions for the rising and falling of curtains into their scores for dramatic effect.
Black history collections in dialogue
This spring, a Yale College junior brought together two of the world's largest and most significant collections of African American cultural history for a special event at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
