This Dec. 9, 2007 photo released by Yale University shows J.D. McClatchy, a longtime editor of The Yale Review, one of the world's oldest literary publications, in New Haven, Conn. McClatchy, a prize winning poet and librettist, said he is leaving The Yale Review, effective at the end of this month. (Yale University via AP)
This Dec. 9, 2007 photo released by Yale University shows J.D. McClatchy, a longtime editor of The Yale Review, one of the world's oldest literary publications, in New Haven, Conn. McClatchy, a prize winning poet and librettist, said he is leaving The Yale Review, effective at the end of this month. (Yale University via AP)

The longtime editor of one of the world’s oldest literary publications is stepping down.

J.D. McClatchy, a prize-winning poet and librettist, has told the Associated Press that he is leaving The Yale Review, effective at the end of this month. Harold Augenbraum, the former executive director of the National Book Foundation, will serve as editor until a permanent replacement is found.

“After 27 years as its editor (and for 10 years before that its unpaid poetry editor), it seemed enough,” McClatchy, who first informed the school of his decision a year ago, wrote in a recent email to the AP.

Known as “Sandy” to his friends, the 71-year-old McClatchy has published eight books of poetry and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2003 for Hazmat. He has also written 16 opera libretti, including an adaptation of Stephen King’s Dolores Claiborne that was performed at the San Francisco Opera in 2013.

The Review’s history dates back to 1819, with Virginia Woolf, Eugene O’Neill and Seamus Heaney among the writers it has published. Yale University had said in 1990 it would close the Review, but reversed itself in response to intense criticism. McClatchy became the new editor.

Associated Press