Editor Interview: The Greensboro Review

Smorgasbord of literature

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 . . .

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

We nominate for all the prize anthologies.