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Editor Interviews

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Read all the editors' answers to Duotrope's interview question: If you publish writing, who are your favorite writers? If you publish art, who are your favorite artists? Learn more.

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Here is a small sampling from our recent Editor Interviews. We have interviewed over 2,175 editors.

Q: If you publish writing, who are your favorite writers? If you publish art, who are your favorite artists?

A: My favorite artist and writer is Alex Pardee. Growing up (and still), I had a lot of nightmares. Pardee paints and writes about his. It was really cool to see that I wasn't alone and that other people out there dealt with similar fears and obstacles. I could never really get myself to paint mine, but I could definitely write them out.

A: Paul Barolsky, A.M. Juster, C. Luke Soucy

A: N K Jemisin
Cecilia Tan
Shanna Germain

A: My favorite writers are Kazuo Ishiguro, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Carlo Rovelli (technically a physicist but his writing is beautiful), and Emily Dickinson.

Penelope Pressman, Editor-in-chief of Fireworks, 22 November 2023

A: I admire alot of haiku writers

A: We select a winner from the entries and our publishing partner (Dreamers Creative Writing) does the actual publishing - our readers are diverse and we select our Fellowship Winner not based on genre or a particular style but mostly for the writer achieving what they set out to do. We choose our first-readers for their excellent taste in a broad selection of fiction.

A: As far as famed heavy hitters go, my co-editor, Sara Judy, is specially a fan of James Schuyler, Muriel Rukeyser, and Robinson Jeffers, and I'm a major fan of A.R. Ammons, David Antin, and Johanna Drucker. Contemporary writers who we admire--and this is by no means exhaustive--include Douglas Kearney, Danez Smith, Natalie Shapero, Monica Youn, Kim Hyesoon, Shane McCrae, Joyelle McSweeney, and Johannes Goransson.

A: Whoever submits to us an extraordinarily interesting short story in a given year, that's one of our favorite writers.

A: While we particularly regard the poetry of Stafford, Dickinson, Bishop, Yeats, Cummings, etc. and the prose of King, Joyce, Hemingway, Munro, and O'Brien (among many others), it is our perspective that the 'what' is much more important than the 'who,' and we are drawn to work that resonates with the elements noted in the previous response.
We have found exceptional, 'wow' experience work from poets and writers of fiction whose names few (unfortunately) would recognize. That experience has been one of the real joys of doing what we do.

A: I don't believe in the concept of favourite writers. I have favourite poets but our readers have their own favourites. Dreich tries to cater for most tastes and opinions.

A: Ada Limon, Ann Patchett, Victor Lavalle, Mary Miller, Mark Strand, Terrance Hayes, Celeste Ng (many many more . . .)

A: Who our personal favorites are is not relevant. Each year a new judge is selected and their own personal preferences may come into play, so there is no telling year to year which manuscripts will rise to the top.