Editor Interview: Anthophile Magazine

A botanical wonderland

The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Economist, and The Paris Review for their literary and journalistic excellence. Hortus - the 'New Yorker' of horticultural literature - for its elegant writing on plants. I also admired Tod Lippy’s Esopus (when it existed) and Flair, a bold and innovative publication from the 1950s.

These have changed over the years and continue to change. I’m a fan of both ‘literary’ fiction (whatever that is) and good old fashioned story-telling so my tastes range from Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald to Ronald Dahl and Stephen King. King's 'On Writing' should be compulsory reading for any would-be author.
In terms of art, widely diverse but not keen on anything twee, or sentimental, or how to put it, ‘over-worked.’ In Volume 1, the photography of Julia Fullerton-Batten has appeared in Anthophile, which is extraordinary. I love it.

Unlike conventional nature or gardening magazines, we explore the natural world through fiction, essays, poetry, satire, and art and offer an imaginative, unconventional - some might say, eccentric - take on the world.

Read the magazine before submitting and get a sense of our style, themes, and tone. We love work that surprises us: imaginative, witty, and deeply engaged with nature in unexpected ways. Aim for timelessness: create something that feels just as engaging now as it would in 20 years. Take creative risks. Be mindful of setting (see later answer)

First and foremost, a piece of great writing. Writing that is sharp, intelligent and crafted with care, style, and purpose. The ideal submission would be imaginative, thought-provoking, and timeless. If non-fiction, I suspect it would take a fresh, unexpected angle, and be offbeat, strange, and slightly eccentric, detailing a historical oddity or a peculiar botanical obsession

My magazine is based in Europe and I do get a lot of pieces from the States, but I need to be careful that the magazine does not become too US-centric or leans more towards an American perspective. I need it to feel universal. If you can make the setting somewhat non-specific, that helps enormously. Also, I am after quirky and slightly bizarre anthophilic tales, be they fiction or non-fiction. For example, telling me about your hunt for wildflowers in Colorado with your dog (albeit beautifully written), might work for an editor in Colorado but it isn’t going to be suitable for me on many different levels. However, telling me a true story about an eccentric Englishman in the 1900s who got lost in Colorado hunting for wildflowers, and his dog returned (who might have eaten him), is different! That’s the story I want to publish.

Clearly, if a cover letter is filled with grammatical errors that is going to set off alarm bells, and possibly the shorter the better. Ideally, I just want to see the piece you’ve written and decide. It’s interesting to see where a writer might have been published before but previous publication credits do not matter to me. I love discovering undiscovered writers, be they eighteen or eighty.

I will always read to the end of the piece.

None. If a piece captures my imagination, it captures my imagination. End of.

I suspect like most editors, my day is busy. In terms of a behind-the-scenes sneak peek of the submission process: Picture a dishevelled English woman with a cup of strong tea sitting at her computer, surrounded by books, with a view of a bucolic English landscape, a dog pestering her to be taken for its walk, reading your writing, and thinking carefully about it.

I don’t like heavy editing - either having it done to my own writing or imposing it on others. The tweaks I make are minimal. I accept very few pieces, and those I do require little to no changes. I believe in publishing work as the writer intended, with only light copyediting if needed. Authors can expect their voice to remain fully intact.

I’m currently exploring award nominations for Anthophile. Watch this space!