In Memoriam: Eileen R. Ewing (1954–2023)

This issue of Contemporary Literature is dedicated to the memory of Eileen R. Ewing, our managing editor, who passed away suddenly on January 23, 2023. Eileen had served as managing editor since 2016, and for many years before that as editorial associate.

Eileen was born in Bluffton, Ohio, and received her undergraduate degree from Bluffton College. She earned a master’s degree from The Ohio State University, where her research focused on the Scottish fantasy author George MacDonald. She taught writing and speech at Ohio State’s Lima campus and at Lima Technical College (now Rhodes State College) before coming to Madison in 1986 to pursue a Ph.D. in English at the University of Wisconsin.

At UW-Madison, Eileen specialized in twentieth-century women’s writing, completing her dissertation, Speaking the Borders: Intersections of Prose, Poetry, and Identity in the Writing of Paula Gunn Allen, Judy Grahn, and H.D., under the supervision of Susan Stanford Friedman. It was as a graduate student that she began her long association with Contemporary Literature, and it was also in our graduate program that she met her partner of thirty-two years, Mary Josephine Heck.

In her decades of work with Contemporary Literature, Eileen was a fierce advocate for and defender of the sixty-year legacy of our journal, and especially after the retirements of Tom Schaub, our longtime executive editor, and Mary Mekemson, her predecessor as managing editor, she became the embodiment of our journal’s living memory. As managing editor, Eileen was the heart and soul of Contemporary Literature. Every article, every interview, every review passed through her hands; every author benefited from her meticulous and masterful editing; and every editor found in her a wonderful, trustworthy colleague.

The phrase that comes to my mind in thinking of Eileen is “quiet strength.” Eileen may have been soft-spoken, but her work came from a deep commitment to and understanding of the field of contemporary literature. Her editorial craft spanned both the traditional and the modern, as she helped shepherd a journal where most things were still done on paper into the digital era. In a reflection on the UW Press blog when she became managing editor, Eileen remarked that she found “the process of rejigging workflows for an electronic environment both stimulating and fun.” That is a pretty good way of describing how Eileen approached her job: both serious and joyful. When I became executive editor of Contemporary Literature, I knew I could do the job with confidence because I had Eileen, her wisdom, and her good company there to lean on.

Eileen’s stewardship helped Contemporary Literature continue to be a field-leading journal, one known, thanks to her impeccable editorial skills and intensive work with authors, as much for the outstanding quality of its writing as for the originality of its scholarly insights. We at Contemporary Literature have lost a treasured colleague and friend, one whose legacy will continue in these pages and in our memories.