NEW LITERARY LION

A staff writer with the New Yorker, Philip Gourevitch, 43, has been named editor of the Paris Review, the quarterly magazine founded in 1953 and long edited by the late George Plimpton. The Paris Review Foundation made the announcement yesterday.

“Terrific,” Mr. Gourevitch told The New York Sun when asked how he felt upon hearing that he had been chosen. “Being named editor of the Paris Review is to be given the tailwind of a fantastic legacy. It should be great fun living up to it.”

“Philip greatly impressed us,” the coeditor of the New York Review of Books, Robert Silvers, who led the search committee, said in a statement released by the foundation. “He is best known for his brilliant reporting. But he has an intense interest in fiction and fresh ideas for the magazine. His editorship promises to continue the tradition of The Paris Review by surprising us with new writing.”

Mr. Gourevitch succeeds Brigid Hughes, who served as the literary magazine’s top editor for a year, having succeeded Plimpton, who died in 2003 at age 76. The literary world was startled when it was announced that her contract would not renewed.

Mr. Gourevitch said he began reading the Paris Review in the library periodical room as a college freshman at Cornell University. He earned an M.F.A. in fiction writing from Columbia University, and published a number of short stories in literary quarterlies. In the 1990s, he worked as New York bureau chief and cultural editor of the Forward, where he is remembered for, among other things, his brilliant coverage of the Crown Heights riots and his mastery as a writer.

Farrar, Straus & Giroux published his first book, “We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: stories from Rwanda” (1998). It garnered numerous prizes, including a National Book Critics Circle Award, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, a George Polk Book Award, and in Britain, the Guardian First Book Award. Universal Pictures is adapting his second book, “A Cold Case” (FSG), for the big screen.

While Plimpton was known to have traversed the globe writing about sports, nature, and other subjects, Mr. Gourevitch has written extensively from Africa, Asia, and Europe. He said he would be interested in the Paris Review publishing more writing from abroad.

He will continue to contribute to the New Yorker, and is finishing a long piece on the aftermath of the tsunami.

Mr. Gourevitch said he began talking to the board of the Paris Review about three weeks ago, and learned Tuesday that he was chosen.

Asked what direction the magazine might take under his helm, Mr. Gourevitch said the best way for readers to grasp his vision would be to “read the issues and it will be unmistakable.” He paused to add, “If they get two subscriptions, they’ll see it in stereo.”

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FIGHTING IRISH

Irish tenor Ronan Tynan and the NYPD Emerald Society bagpipers performed at a fund-raiser for the Fighting 69th to raise money for scholarships for children of fallen soldiers. The Fighting 69th – the Irish Brigade – consists of the 1st battalion, 69th Infantry of the Army National Guard in New York.

Host Michael Doorley of Prudential International introduced those honored during the evening. Josef and Roz Ross, who started the Ross Family Survivor to Survivors Scholarship, were among the honorees. Mr. Ross is a Holocaust survivor who promised himself that he would one day thank his liberators. Now a businessman who lives in Fort Lee, N.J., he began a scholarship at Ramapo College for children of American soldiers who have died during recent conflicts.

The crowd broke into cheers and applause when Mr. Ross, wearing a green tie, announced an Irish connection: He has a grandchild named Joshua Menachem-Mendel McBride.

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GRASSROOTS PRESERVATION

The Historic Districts Council, which advocates for New York’s more than 80 designated historic districts, is scheduled to hold its Annual Grassroots Preservation Awards on May 12 at St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery. Preservationists Adrienne and Joseph Bresnan were honored at a HDC reception earlier this month at the New York City Police Museum. Among those seen were Joyce Mendelsohn, author of “The Lower East Side Remembered and Revisited”; the president of the Sunnyside Gardens Preservation Alliance, architect Kevin Wolfe; Bill Sievers of the Douglaston-Little Neck Historical Society; Paul Graziano of Associated Cultural Resource Consultants, and the executive director of the Queens Historical Society, Mitchell Grubler.

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KNICKKNACKS

At a preview of the Broadway revival of Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” at the Longacre Theatre benefiting LongHouse Reserve, Mr. Albee told the Knickerbocker, “Good play. Good actors. Just hope the audience and critics behave themselves.”… At the 10th annual Visitors Awards hosted by Where magazine, winners included ’21’ Club for best bar, St. Regis Hotel for best cocktails, and Aureole for best dessert … At a lecture on Einstein at the CUNY Graduate Center, a professor from Case Western University, Lawrence Krauss, described how scientists build on predecessors’ discoveries. Physics, he said, is like Hollywood: “If it works, you copy it.” …The National Book Critics Circle holds its awards on Friday night at the New School University. The founder of Algonquin Press and author and editor of over 50 books, Louis D. Rubin Jr., will receive the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award.