Editor Interview: The Moth Magazine

Funny, quirky, lyrical.

The New Yorker, Granta, POETRY, Poetry Review, The Stinging Fly ...

Patricia Highsmith, Tom McCarthy, Toni Morrison. Chantal Joffe, David Hockney, Victor Man ...

A subscriber wrote this a few years back, and it still makes me smile: "I skim the serious American journals where I send work, but I actually *read* The Moth and I aspire to it. My friend the nun is shocked, I think, by the work … but she is reading it too, in her Italian cloister. She is probably praying for you."

Read a copy of The Moth.

A heartbreaking work of staggering genius from a first-time author.

They don't read the magazine.

It's nice to receive a cover letter where the author has gone to the bother of finding out your name, and is polite and clear about what they are submitting. Publication credits matter less.

I'll read on as long as I'm compelled to do so by the work.

None.

I read poetry and nothing but poetry for a week or two, creating a maybe pile as I go, and then narrow that down to the few that can go into the magazine. Repeat for short stories.

It really depends. Sometimes a light copyedit is all that's needed, but sometimes more work is necessary, in which case I flag it up with the author first, before they agree to publication.

Yes.