Starnino leaves Maisonneuve to join Reader's Digest; Drew Nelles new EIC

Nelles and publisher Varkhonyi

The longtime editor-in-chief of Maisonneuve magazine, Carmine Starnino is stepping down. He co-founded the Montreal magazine with Derek Webster in 2002, who left to become managing editor of Reader's Digest in 2009. For the past year, Starnino has been working as a part-time editor at RD and will now be joining it full time as senior editor. Starnino will stay on the Maisonneuve board of directors and will be an editor-at-large for the magazine.

"It's heartbreaking to leave Maisonneuve. So much of my identity is bound up with this organization," Starnino said in a release. "Four times a year, bleary-eyed and over-stressed, we scrambled to produce one of the best magazines in the country. It's been exhilarating. But the opportunity to work editorially with Derek again, on the scale of a magazine like Reader's Digest, was too good to pass up."

Drew Nelles, who has been with Maisonneuve since 2009, lately as senior editor, is the new editor-in-chief. Madeline Coleman, who joins from Concordia's the Link, becomes associate editor.  Nelles was a contributor to Maisonneuve's much-missed daily briefing called MediaScout and, at one time, he too worked for Reader's Digest as associate web editor.

An award-winning poet, Carmine Starnino has written four collections of poetry. His most recent book, This Way Out (2009), was nominated for the Governor General's Award for Poetry.

Maisonneuve will continue its quarterly publishing schedule under the direction of publisher Jennifer Varkonyi, and Anna Minzhulina will stay on as art director. In 2010, Maisonneuve was nominated for ten National Magazine Awards, including Magazine of the Year.

The Spring 2011 Issue—Nelles' first as editor-in-chief—includes new writing by Sheila Heti, Pasha Malla, Naheed Mustafa, Ira Basen and rapper Cadence Weapon. "Captain Poetry,"  Starnino's essay on legendary poet bpNichol, will also appear. The issue will be on newsstands March 25.