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Editor Interview: The Greensboro Review

Q: Describe what you publish in 25 characters or less.

A: Smorgasbord of literature

Q: What other current publications (or publishers) do you admire most?

A: Our reading habits are as eclectic and evolving as the stories and poems we select for publication. Currently we're into: Baltimore Review, Barrelhouse, Crazyhorse, Diagram, Juke Joint, Mississippi Review, New Ohio Review, Ploughshares, Raleigh Review, Stay Thirsty Magazine, Superstition Review, TriQuarterly, Waxwing, Zone 3 . . .

Q: What is the best advice you can give people who are considering submitting work to your publication?

A: Most importantly, read an issue (or four, or five) first. Do you like what we're doing? If you do, we may like your work as well.

Q: Describe the ideal submission.

A: The ideal submission follows the guidelines *and* is representative of what we've published over the long haul. For instance, we only publish twenty or so pages of poetry in each issue. A twenty-page poem is not ideal.

Q: What do submitters most often get wrong about your submissions process?

A: We only publish short fiction and poetry but receive a surprising number of creative nonfiction submissions.

Q: How much do you want to know about the person submitting to you?

A: We do like to have a cover letter with contact information but publication credits don't weigh into our decision making process.

Q: If you publish writing, how much of a piece do you read before making the decision to reject it?

A: If an author spends the time and money to submit a piece to us, we feel it's our responsibility to read the entire submission.

Q: What is a day in the life of an editor like for you?

A: Deliberation is built into our editorial process. If a story is strong, I ask for arguments against it. If a story gets mixed reviews, I ask for someone to argue for it. In addition to our genre editors, we also have editorial interns. A top-50 story my receive nine diverse readings before the editors sit down to select the half-dozen we'll run. These many-voiced deliberations make for better stories and provide some insurance against accepting a story that emerges as a ball of technical problems when we get to the line-by-line editing part of the process.

Q: How much do you edit an accepted piece prior to publication?

A: We provide substantive editing for all of the stories we accept for publication. However, for us, this is not a top-down process but rather an extended conversation with the author as we work to make the piece the best it can be.

Q: Do you nominate work you've published for any national or international awards?

A: We nominate for all the prize anthologies.