Editor Interview: Northwest Review

The Frontier

The Southern Review and Taco Bell Quarterly.

My favorite writers are Louise Glück, Leslie Marmon Silko, Emily Dickinson, Phillis Wheatley, Alejo Carpentier, Jose Donoso, and Juan Gabriel Vásquez.

Burn it all down. Build it back better.

Forsake all and follow the divine tyranny of art.

Work which, for the writer and artist, is quite simply a matter of life and death.

They have not sufficiently revised or rewrittten their work (yet); and many writers are still exploring the areas of their own mind and biography which have not yet released their secrets into the writing; that is to say, much of the work our writers have yet to finish is internal and personal, as opposed to revealing more work needed in the sentence construction itself, or in the form or meter: it’s less the writing that needs more time as it is the writer whose journey as an artist has only begun.

Everything. Previous publications are interesting but ultimately bear no relevance to the final decisions our editors make.

Properly trained fiction editors should be able to critique a prose style in one sentence (or less); though we counsel a full page read before passing: there’s no “but if you only got to the amazing finish;” there is no finish without a perfect opening gambit.

If a reader says, “I love this one SO MUCH,” that’s usually enough to convince the rest of the team; rarely do we not empower our newer editors to take a story or poem to the finish line and offer two, three, even four rounds of revision. I remember stories at The Paris Review that never saw their words in print because the authors walked away from edits. Likewise, The New Yorker staff used to edit short fiction for as long as a year before publication.

Mostly making countless bowls of Mac and cheese or spaghetti for my wild children. Additionally, I watch the publication lists of Transit Books and David Godine. I read everything.

I edited one piece for nearly six months before we all felt it was finished.

Fuckin’ a we do!! I personally mailed a copy of our journal that featured “Hair Sestina,” by Alexis Sears, which David Lehman selected for the Best American Poetry Series 2022.