Q&A: SWINK EDITOR LEELILA STROGOV

Swink Magazine debuted earlier this year as an attempt to bridge the New York and Los Angeles literary communities, and to offer up a literary magazine with a bit of style and a fresh approach. The founder and editor of magazine, Leelila Strogov, is a powerhouse of energy, enthusiasm and vision, an editor who seems unlikely to take no for answer. If force of will alone were sufficient to move literary mountains, the fiction world might be remade already. Although things may move a bit slower in reality, a recent conversation with Strogov makes clear that she has big plans, and boundless energy with which to implement them:

TEV: I would like to talk about some of the broader questions around Swink, and then get into some of the particulars about the magazine itself. But I’d like to get a little of your background first because I know from some of what I’ve read about you that you’re a writer yourself, and you’re an M.I.T. grad. I’m not one of those people who thinks it’s so impossible that an M.I.T. grad should be interested in literature but I’d like you to talk a little bit about that.

LS: I think it was kind of accidental. I mean, I think I started out – my mother’s a doctor, my father’s a computer scientist, they’re immigrants from Bulgaria. I think it’s often the case you get immigrants who think – at least in my generation – think the only professions are those in the sciences. And that’s kind of how I was raised. And I was raised to think that those were the only professions that there were. And even though I got some early signs in my English classes and my history classes that I was very good at that stuff, I really excelled at math and science.

TEV: What did you study at M.I.T.?

LS: I started out studying math and philosophy and at the very end of my tenure there I switched to writing. So I kind of found my calling at the end.

TEV: What does M.I.T. offer in terms of writing?

LS: Well funny enough it does have social sciences program. But they do not offer a B.A. They only offer a B.S. So my degree is actually a B.S. in writing. Because I had to take the equivalent of all the pre-med classes. So I have all physics, the chemistry, the bios, three calculuses. I mean, I have all of that and I’m glad I have all of that. It was really interesting. It was also interesting to branch out because I think if you major in a science at M.I.T. you don’t get a well-rounded education. Whereas if you actually major in a humanities, you do. Because you have to take the sciences anyway. So that’s sort of how it happened. It was really accidental and I excelled in math and sciences but then really found out that I loved literature and writing, even though I didn’t pursue it for a very long time.

TEV: So what happened next? Where did you go from M.I.T.?

LS: I seem to be seesawing because I ended up directly after college actually going to Guatemala and studying and being a journalist for a while for a very small paper called The Antigua Review. That was the English paper. So I went there, I taught English for a while, and – this was, I graduated in 1994 – it was just sort of a six month stint, and then I came back and I worked for a while as an editorial assistant at Simon and Schuster in New York. And there was a certain point at which I was just sort of seeing everyone around me, the writing business was not very lucrative, I was barely able to support myself. I think I was making at the time something like $21,000 –

TEV: Ah, the high end of the food chain.

LS: Exactly. So I went to a recruiter, and very, very accidentally the recruiter placed me at an internet company called Juno. And it was the very early stages of this internet company, and I rose very quickly. I started out as an entry level and I seemed to be promoted every four months, until finally I ended up as their senior vice president. I was overseeing thirty-five people … and Juno did very well, it went public, and I was at a point financially where I could afford to say, “OK, now maybe I’ll go back to what I couldn’t afford to do before and do it now.” And that’s kind of the point that I’m at, and I’m pursuing what I love as opposed to what I have to do in order to survive.

TEV: Was Juno here or in New York?

LS: Juno was in New York.

TEV: So what brought you to Los Angeles?

LS: Well, what happened was I was originally in New York, and then I opened up a San Francisco office for Juno, so I was bi-coastal going back and forth every week. And it really came down to I just wanted to try a new city. It was as simple as that.

TEV: Flipped a coin and landed on Los Angeles.

LS: Yeah, yeah.

TEV: Interesting choice for a literary city. Which leads me to my next question. When I first heard of Swink, one of the things that I liked was the idea of a bi-coastal literary connection. It struck me as very interesting but it also begs the question: What is the L.A. literary scene, per se?

LS: It’s very funny but I don’t think people realize there actually are a lot of writers in L.A. who are transplants from the New York literary scene. I was just at a dinner party over the weekend with Meghan Daum, Darcy Cosper, and Lisa Glatt, and I mean Meghan and Darcy are originally from New York … and I’ve heard that A.M. Homes is actually working on a book out here. The lifestyle is so much easier here, I think it’s actually a lot easier to get the work done here.

TEV: We’ve also Percival Everett and T.C. Boyle out at USC –

LS: Absolutely!

TEV: - you’ve got Mona Simpson and other interesting people over at UCLA. But there doesn’t yet seem to be a sense of literary community. There are lots of far-flung –

LS: That’s what I’m here for.

TEV: OK, so what’s your master plan? How are you going to bring it all together?

LS: It sounds awful to say but I really think it’s just of matter of L.A. kind of needs – and I don’t assume to fill such grand shoes – but L.A. needs kind of a George Plimpton to bring everyone together and to have gatherings. I mean, I’m meeting so many incredible people here, and they just need to come together in a way that’s not … what’s the word … that’s not ugly. That’s not competitive. That’s not nasty. And I do think in New York the intensity can get a little high. Like, “Did you go to that party last night,” or “Did you make it into that New York Times article?” It can be a little too intense. Whereas here, I think it’s kind of perfect. Because it’s not too intense, it’s under the radar, so you can actually just have fun.

TEV: Because everything here lives in the shadow of screenwriting.

LS: Yes, which I think is a great thing. I wouldn’t want to be in Hollywood precisely for those reasons. And I don’t want the literary community to turn into that. And I don’t think it is, so far.

TEV: It’s staying out of harm’s way. This question is really part of a bigger discussion that’s going about the role and place of literary magazines, but the question I actually wanted to start with, was “What were you thinking?” –

LS: I’m asking myself that

TEV: - in both an admiring and an incredulous way, to launch another literary magazine. There’s a website I frequent called The Reading Experience, written by a guy named Dan Green, and he wrote an interesting article for Conext magazine about “Innovative Fiction and the American Literary Magazine.” I’d like to read you something he wrote and get a response to it. It’s something I find some truth in. He says:

I do believe that a truly dispassionate sampling of current little magazines would disclose a scene in which very little truly daring innovation, in neither form nor subject nor style, seems to be encouraged, a scene that is predictably varied where the skill with which the familiar strategies of realistic fiction are adapted is concerned but that is mostly simply predictable …

And he goes on to say, toward the end:

At the moment, it would seem, the risk-averse neorealist aesthetic is firmly established in the American literary magazine …

Now, in Dan is generally quite supportive of literary magazines and their role but it does beg the question, How do you stand out in a market of magazines where one of the big knocks is that it’s plagued by a real similarity. Take literary journal X and Y, even the formats are the same, the content often barely distinguishable. How does Swink distinguish itself?

LS: I think what’s happening is you need to weigh experiment with quality. And it’s unfortunate but most of the stuff you get just isn’t very good. And that’s sort of the bottom line. The majority of what you get that is good is by solicitation, and even a lot of times, that’s not good. I’ll solicit something for a famous author, and they’ll have to send me three or four things before I’m happy.

TEV: Three of four drafts of same, or three or four different pieces?

LS: No, three or four different pieces! I will get things and I will be really up front and say “I’m really picky, and just know that. I may reject you. Are you OK with that?”

TEV: So for all my readers who have fiction submitting aspirations, how would you classify your taste?

LS: Well, I think it’s really hard to classify one’s taste because, of course, I’m just going to say I like what’s good. But I also like what’s a little different and a little daring, both in terms of content and in terms of form. If you give me something that is just new, just novel … I mean, I don’t know how much of Swink you were able to get through, but Etgar Keret’s piece [Pride and Joy], the very first piece is this bizarre story about a guy who, as he grows, he realizes his parents shrink. And by the end of the story he’s carrying them in his shirt pocket while riding a bicycle. I don’t think that that is not surprising. I think that is unusual. And I would love to have more of that. And I have a story coming out, actually, in the next issue by Bob Hicok that does a lot of that sort of surrealistic stuff, and it’s really well done.

TEV: I noticed you have one of the Barthelme brothers on your masthead.

LS: Yeah!

TEV: I happening to be re-reading 60 Stories at the moment.

LS: Oh! Excellent.

TEV: So the new and novel is clearly welcome and encouraged.

LS: Absolutely! It’s welcome and encouraged. And I will say that despite the fact that I say most of the stuff isn’t very good, and that most of the stuff we published is by solicitation, I am hungry for new writers. The debut section is extremely important to me. And so, I want new fiction. I really want. … I’ve gotten a lot of really good feedback saying we needed something new in this space. Because so many other people are saying how could you, why another magazine? You know, I had dinner with Neal Pollack the other night and he said “We so needed something fresh in this space.”

TEV: Do you read everything?

LS: Everything. Everything. That’s when I get most excited, by the debut work. Now, I have readers who help. What I’ll do is I’ll read through, and I’ll usually know – and this will sound awful – but I usually know within a page if I don’t want to go on. And then, if I read three or four pages that I think are really good, at that point, I’ll pass it on to a few people. And if it’s really strong, I’ll just read through it until the end myself. I have a piece now that I’m sitting on that I don’t know quite what to do with yet because half of it’s great. And half of it isn’t. And I still haven’t decided do I want to take the time. I do work with writers and I edit them a lot but this one would require a lot of work, and it comes down to a weighing of time. I’m so swamped but I’d really like to publish this woman.

TEV: Some writers do appreciate it. My last short story was passed on by Zoetrope but the editor made some insightful comments, which I took, and the rewritten story was taken up elsewhere.

LS: That’s great. Getting feedback is key. And some people are really sensitive about it. And you have to sort of gauge who is and who isn’t. And I think it’s nice to be a writer who’s a little bit open.

TEV: So, I’m still curious to hear how you’re going to unite the L.A. literary scene. What are the steps?

LS: Well, one of the things we’re going to be doing, and we still haven’t nailed a venue yet, but we’re having every other month readings on both coasts. We’re having the New York reading on the first Monday of every even month, and L.A. readings on the first Monday of every odd month.

TEV: Appropriate. We’re kind of an odd bunch. Do you have a New York venue?

LS: Yes, the first one is happening June 7th [TEV Note – Witness the dangers of transcription lag time.] Then it’s just a matter of locating the spot for the L.A. one. The thing for me is where. I’d like to do it around [Silver Lake] because I think a lot of writers do live around here but I wonder if that would alienate the Westside.

TEV: That’s always the problem in L.A.

LS: I’m trying to figure out what the best location would be. But we’re going to do that, we’re going to have regular parties at my house just like the one that we had [for the launch] with the publication of every issue. And just in general I’m probably going to start hosting quite a few events.

TEV: Were you familiar with the Spoken Interludes reading series that recently closed up shop to move back east?

LS: Yes, I am, and I’ve actually been approached by quite a few people to say you need to do something to replace it. We are definitely thinking about that.

TEV: Would your reading series be exclusively for Swink published fiction, or would you go wider and include other work?

LS: I don’t think it needs to be limited to what’s in Swink. I think in the beginning it will be limited to at least the writers who are in Swink or who will be appearing in Swink. So for example, I’m throwing, along with Simon and Schuster, a party for a debut novelist who’s in Swink named Lisa Glatt.

TEV: Married to David Hernandez, your poetry editor.

LS: Yes! And he’s a fabulous poetry editor. Poetry editor extraordinaire. I don’t know what I’d do without him. And one of the reasons is that I don’t really know that much about poetry, I just know what I like when I like it.

TEV: I’m not sure one needs to know much more than that.

LS: You might be right, you might be right. But our sensibilities seem to really work, and we have a veto policy, which is that I can veto anything he picks and he can veto anything I pick.

TEV: On fiction side as well?

LS: No. Just poetry. So if there’s ever someone I really love as a poet who David doesn’t like, I will say to them, “Do you have any short fiction?” (Laughs.) That’s the only way I can do it.

TEV: The appearance of Swink also touches on some other questions we’ve been talking about out there in the literary blogworld about the role of, the place of short stories. Here’s another piece published in Doublethink, not quite about the death of the short story, but suggesting that the view places that do publish don’t talk about them very much, they don’t seem to be boosters of the form. And there is a perception to a large extent that most short story writers are just platforming to their novel, by accruing credits. Where do you weigh in on the vitality of the short story today?

LS: The bottom line is that people care about novels more than they care about short fiction, and if you ask any publisher oftentimes they are loathe to publish a collection of short stories unless they know a novel is coming or they can get a two-book deal. The fact of the matter is this is a business, and I’m a business person and I recognize that there isn’t wide mass appeal for the short story just yet. There just isn’t.

TEV: Yet your first interview was with Adam Haslett. Was that a way of declaring a statement of purpose to your readership? Or was that just coincidence?

LS: It was a little bit of both. … You can do really important things with short fiction, which he did. … I think, personally, I’m a huge fan of the short story. I like short stories more than I like novels.

TEV: Where do you go for your short stories? Where do you get your fix? Do you go to literary journals, do you buy collections, do you read them online?

LS: I do a real combination. I absolutely scour the literary magazines and a lot of them, I read a lot of different kinds of literary magazines. The one thing that I find that’s really difficult – and it’s really difficult for us, too – is that it’s difficult to find a magazine that really consistently has excellent material. So for that, the anthologies are great. And I will scour the anthologies as well. I especially like the Pushcart Prize anthology.

TEV: And do you read them with an eye toward soliciting future work?

LS: Absolutely.

TEV: Let me talk a little bit about some of details of Swink. Let’s get into some of the particulars. You mentioned George Plimpton, and one of my questions has to do with inspiration and models. Beyond The Paris Review, when you had your earliest thoughts what was informing your impulses?

LS: It was really a combination of magazines. What I was looking for was something that would be serious and wouldn’t be stodgy. And one of the greatest compliments that I got was by e-mail from Bernard Cooper, who said, “Swink is the perfect combination of literary rigor and pure fun.” And I loved that. Because that’s exactly what we want to be.

TEV: It’s got a great look, too. You pick up all these journals and they look so –

LS: They don’t look inviting.

TEV: Exactly. And it looks like you put a lot of thought into the design.

LS: I really did. A lot of thought, a lot of energy, and I’m continuing to do that. And the design is extremely important to me. And I think there are a few that are doing that right. For example, I think Tin House and Zoetrope play with design in a way that is inviting.

TEV: Everyone points to McSweeney’s has having first paid attention to that side of things.

LS: Yes! They did. So I think it’s a matter of striking that right balance.

TEV: I liked finding the callouts from the various stories in different parts of the magazine from where the story itself was running. Sort of like footprints or bread crumbs in a trail leading to the story. What about the actual mechanics of starting it up? How long did it take.

LS: Nine months. It was like having a baby. That’s exactly how long it took. I had a team, I have an associate editor named Tricia Han who’s in New York. I have a senior editor here named Cheryl Alu who has helped out quite a bit. And then of course David Hernandez. Also Yoeli Barag and Louis Berger, both part of the editorial staff in New York. And a few people here and there, interns and that sort of thing. A lot of it came from me, and I think that the help that I had is going to be more useful as time goes on because with the beginning of anything, when you’re at the helm, you have to learn it all yourself. Unless you’ve done it before.

TEV: So what have been some of your shocking lessons?

LS: Things that like, for example, you buy ISBN numbers ten at a time for four hundred dollars. I mean, it’s just ridiculously expensive some of this stuff.

TEV: There’s paper and printing –

LS: Yeah! I found again, I mean it was researching printers and trying to find the least expensive printer, the least expensive way to do it. Who would have known that matte is actually more expensive than glossy? It’s ridiculous. It’s almost like it’s more expensive to look less expensive.

TEV: Shabby chic.

LS: Exactly. Just little things that didn’t occur to you. Publicity expenses. Getting the word out.

TEV: Which you seem to have done fairly well.

LS: I think a lot of it has to do with a little work that went a long way, just because we put a lot of effort into the magazine itself. I think it’s hard to get publicity for something that’s really lousy.

TEV: You might be able to bring people it to but they won’t stay.

LS: That’s exactly right.

TEV: One of the stumbling block that seems to confront a lot of literary magazines is distribution. How is that going for you?

LS: We have a distributor, we've been picked up for distriubtion by one of the biggies, which means we will soon be available in Barnes & Noble, Borders and the like. I do have mixed feelings in that you end up not making much money at all, you just get more widely distributed. It’s kind of a toss up.

TEV: Forgetting for a moment how it compensates you, is your vision that there should be a copy of Swink in every Barnes and Noble? That it’s ubiquitous and easy to get a hold of. Or do you want to tie it to the independent scene.

LS: You know, if you asked me a few months ago, I would have said yes, and yes, even now, I would like it to be in every Barnes and Noble. I am not by my nature an elitist at all. I mean, I would be thrilled if The Today Show introduced this. And not even for financial reasons. I think people – just like you marry who you meet, people tend to read what’s given to them if they think it’s good. And so I think there is a place for it in the mass market. I just think the higher-ups don’t think there is. So we just have to find a creative way to get it into those people’s hands, and I actually have no doubt that we will. It’s just a matter for time management. There are things that need to get into place first, things are mundane as e-commerce on the site, that have to get done before I can tackle those other issues.

TEV: What’s going on for the next issue? How far along are you?

LS: We’re actually not that far into the second issue. We’re probably about forty percent in, so we have quite a bit to go, and there’s a lot of heavy soliciting going on right now, and a lot of heavy reading. We’ve gotten a lot of attention and more mail than ever.

TEV: Do you ever just look at the slush pile and sag under the weight of it?

LS: Nope. I look it at and I say there’s got to be a gem in here. There’s gotta be something great. The slush pile doesn’t tire me. I’m really excited because it’s doing a lot better than I ever dreamed it would have done.

TEV: How are subscriptions?

LS: Great, incredible. You know, we’re brand new and we have fifteen hundred subscriptions. We’re really growing very quickly at a pace I can’t even keep up with. Which is why we’re trying to computerize our subscription base. I mean, right now we have it all in Excel because I didn’t expect us to grow this quickly.

TEV: Well, your energy was probably focused on the content.

LS: Exactly, that’s exactly right.

TEV: I love Damaged Darlings. I’ve actually solicited a fellow blogger, who shall remain anonymous, to see about interest in collaborating on one.

LS: That would be great!

TEV: I’d like to know about some of those special features and how they came about. What was the inspiration for things like Damaged Darlings [TEV Note: In which one writer finishes a story abandoned by another writer.] and Peregrinations?

LS: The inspiration for Damaged Darlings was me and a writing group. A guy with a great story that just was not coming together but had some excellent elements. And I kept thinking to myself, you know I could turn this story into an absolute gem but I’m not going to. There’s no market for it. I mean, what would we do, share the credit? Boom! That’s how it came about. From me thinking that he’d started something fabulous and could not for the life of him make it work; and me thinking, God, I see exactly what this needs.

TEV: Did you solicit those as well?

LS: Yes, I solicit for it specifically. I will ask writers, “Do you have anything that I can look at that you’ve just slaved, slaved over but have not been able to make work?”

TEV: And then you pick a person to send it to?

LS: I do. It has to be with the approval of the original writer, and then the original writer cannot look at it again. So it literally switches hands and the second person can do what they want with it.

TEV: How did the two writers react to the two pieces that were reworked?

LS: It’s actually very interesting. Nelly Reifler was ecstatic. They were both actually ecstatic. Nelly Reifler was ecstatic and so was Chris Offutt. But there was a little sticking point during the Chris Offutt/Amy Bloom piece, where Amy had in the story a line that referred to the character, so the character herself was referring to her own self, as “trailer trash.” And Chris said, “No character of mine would ever refer to anyone as trash.”

TEV: But the character isn’t his anymore, is it?

LS: Well, in the end it was taken out. I had to put it in their court. I was mediator and I wasn’t winning on either side, so I finally said, “Listen, if you guys can’t come to agreement on this, then it’s not going to be published.” And they’re actually good friends, and they get along really well, it was just an aesthetic sensibility, and Amy Bloom was really nice in the end and said, “You know, it’s not that important to me, it’s fine. I’ll take it out.” And it was just more a tongue in cheek line, self-deprecation that he objected to. And that was really the only testy moment.

TEV: You may have more of those ahead of you.

LS: I’m sure.

TEV: What about Peregrinations? [TEV Note - essays on travel or journeys]

LS: Funny enough, the inspiration for that one was that it’s just one of my favorite words. I just love that word and it shows up a lot in The Last Gentleman by Walker Percy, a book that I love. And I just thought that people have so many stories from when they travel, really good stories, and this would be a great way to get them to write them. Rachel Resnick wrote this piece [Death in Not Ping-Pong] specifically for us. She traveled to India and I said, “You have an India piece in you.” And she said, “Yeah I do. I have it I just have to write it.” So it’s one of those sections that I think people would write for if they knew there was a venue for it. And I think it worked out really well.

TEV: And these are non-fiction. They’re not fictionalized travelogues.

LS: No, they’re non-fiction. Real travel, yes. So is It Takes One to Know One [TEV Note: In which someone writes about someone else, living or dead, who shares his or her vocation or avocation.]

TEV: I loved David Ulin’s essay on Exley’s A Fan’s Notes.

LS: It’s a great piece. He’s a really thoughtful guy and a brilliant essayist.

TEV: And that essay is partially on the website.

LS: Yes.

TEV: Which is a good place to ask: I know you have some plans for the web, and I'm wondering if you'd care to weigh on how literary magazines in general, and Swink in particular, can make better use of the web, particularly in breaking down the elitism that seems to exist when it comes to print vs. web publications.

LS: I am actually a big fan of literature on the web and do think magazines can be using the web to greater effect both as a publishing tool and as a marketing tool. It still amazes me that there are some journals out there that do not so much as list the table of contents for each of their issues; so much of our traffic comes from people searching for authors they admire.

I think some online only publications are doing a great job. One in particular is Mr. Beller's Neighborhood. Another is Nerve. The problem I find with many online journals is that because they're online they feel they can let the quality slip, if only periodically. Basically, there's often not a whole lot at stake. It's not like it's going to cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars to print a particular poem or story, and there's also no sense of necessity to publish the absolute best stuff you can find in order to break even on your printing costs, so there tends to be a "what the hell" atttitude. Because of this, I think, writers themselves are less inclined to want to be published as part of an online-only forum. I think Nerve is getting around this by charging a premium subscription fee, which is essentially the same as a subscription to a regular magazine. But in general, I can't tell you how many times I've heard from writers that they are just not interested in being published online. I think part of the problem is that they feel if too much of their work is available online, no one will ever bother buying any of their books--especially if we're talking anthologies or short fiction when 50% are already available on the web. So we've had to rely on emerging writers to fill this niche.

Another big problem is that very long work just doesn't work on the web. In fact, I think anything over 3,000 words can get really tedious. I even find myself just printing out such pieces and reading them that way instead of at my computer. We do plan to launch a web-only theme issue that will also be biannual and exclusively available online, but it is in conjunction with the print issue, and the pieces are generally shorter than what we print in the magazine. But the standards are high, and I'm excited to see how much traffic it will generate.

But I think the answer to a better literary environment on the web lies in raising the standards. As soon as publishers make the standards for online publishing as high as they are for print, the better writers they'll be able to attract, and the better the overall state of online publishing will be. But, as non-elitist as I am (and I have a very specific definition for that--namely that I don't care about a writer's name, whoever he or she may be, I care about how good the writing is), I also think there's nothing like lying down with a magazine in your hand, a blanket across your chest, and a dog or cat at your feet... There's just no substitute for print, and I don't think there ever will be.

TEV: Will every issue include debut fiction?

LS: Every issue. And hopefully first poetry, too. David was just a little stickler this time. But we’ve finally found a newbie who he fell in love with.

TEV: In the literary world, some of these credit can be a bit elastic. When you say first fiction, you mean truly, utterly unpublished? Or perhaps someone who’s had a piece in a 150-circulation journal?

LS: These are utterly unpublished. I know the debut poetry, he has been published once in Canada.

TEV: Oh, well that doesn’t count.

LS: So we’re stretching it a little bit. But the debut fiction is really meant to be true debut. Who knows, we may make that elastic at some point.

TEV: Now you can’t find them, because obviously you don’t know who they are. They must be coming in to you.

LS: Debuts either come to me by submissions, or what I will do is go out to the teachers in the literary community and say, “Send me your brilliant students” because a lot of time those are unpublished. And that’s how you spread the word about that. I had somebody actually go through the AWP writing program guide and, not every single one but at least the top fifty.

TEV: I’d like to talk more about your vision for the poetry side of the house.

LS: I know what I like.

TEV: I read poetry the same way. How did David come to be part of your operation, and if he were her to describe Swink’s poetic sensibilities what would he say?

LS: David has an issue with … David likes – generally speaking; he does break from this – the narrative poem. Which is where I think our sensibilities mesh because I do, too. Neither of us tends to like poetry with seven hundred ellipsis. It doesn’t do it for us. So he really just likes poetry that makes sense, he’s not a huge fan of the language poets but once in a while you’ll see him cave. And I actually disagree with him a little bit there because there are some really interesting things that I think you can do with language, even when the poem doesn’t make that much sense. But he doesn’t go for that. It’s got to make sense. So I think that’s what he would say.

TEV: As you guys are going to press, another L.A. magazine – Black Clock – has launched. Have you checked them out and, if so, what do you think about the competition?

LS: I have to tell you I am just not competitive at all when it comes to this space. I have a competitive streak; it’s not come out in this space at all. The only thing that I feel is that this is the space where everyone stands to gain. Black Clock people were at the Swink debut party, supporting us. And I met a lot of them at AWP and they’re such nice guys, and I wouldn’t even mind doing some stuff with them.

TEV: Are there differences between an academically supported journal and something like Swink?

LS: Not necessarily. I think, yes, they tend to be a little bit different for some bizarre reason. I think the reason might be that you have – I mean, there are some academic journals that are just incredible, like the Mississippi Review for example. But there are some that are sort of staid. Now with Black Clock, I do have an issue, but my issue with them is the way they are handling submissions: they’re closed to submissions. To me that is incredibly undemocratic, it’s elitist, which I’m not and I think it’s unwise, because who is your readership going to be? I mean, if you really aren’t accepting any submissions, why should we read you?

TEV: Well that’s one of the arguments that dogs the world of academic literary journals, which is that they’re sort of platforms for MFA students who are writing. (They get very defensive when you suggest this, by the way.)

LS: Well you’d be surprised. The more serious ones will not accept their own. Like The Indiana Review.

TEV: But there is a sense with a lot of these magazines that a certain kind of story is expected and embraced.

LS: Right. There’s a certain sensibility. We are definitely trying to get as far away from that as possible and have more diversity. I even took a few things – which I won’t mention – that weren’t necessarily my taste but that I knew were good. But I didn’t want the whole magazine to feel like –

TEV: - like it was just your taste.

LS: Yeah. I wanted a wider audience. So I got second opinions. I said, “I think this is really good. I don’t personally love it. Would you guys read it and tell me what you think?” And I got back a few “Oh my God, I absolutely love this.” And the same thing happened with pieces that I love. Other people said, “I’m not crazy about that.” And when that happens, I’d say, “Well, you’re wrong.” (laughs)

TEV: How does one widen the audience for literary magazines? This is something else we talk about in that the people who are thumbing through the literary magazine section of the bookstore have a vague awareness and you’re sort of preaching to the choir. But how do bring in that new reader, who might not think to crowbar themselves away from Friends for a half-hour to pick up a short story instead?

LS: It’s extremely difficult. One of the things is being attractive. That helps. If they happen to be in the magazine section at all, maybe they’ll pick you up and say “What’s this? It looks kind of cool,” But I think it’s extremely difficult and the only thing you can really do is to look for creative ways to get some good publicity. We got a huge spike in subscriptions after NPR did a thing on us. And that is, to a certain degree, a mass audience. But if we could get it on The Today Show, that would be great. I think it could happen. I think it could. It’s just a matter of time and pursuing it. I haven’t had time yet but I will eventually.

TEV: I was interested in your Editors’ Awards for Emerging Writers. What’s the planned frequency?

LS: Once a year. So we’re now accepting submissions for October 1.

TEV: There’s been some controversy about contests that collect entry fees and don’t select winners; and other magazines talking about the generally poor quality of contest submissions. What are you finding? Is there enough out there to find a contest winner?

LS: Yes. Absolutely. We have some great submissions. A lot of what’s published in there came from the contest submissions. So I disagree with that. And yes, when you compare the numbers, maybe there were ten out of seven hundred that were great but it’s not bad. And I think it’s really encouraging for the really excellent writers – they stand a good shot at winning these things.

TEV: I always end with a question about blogs because I’m curious what to what extent were you aware of the world of literary weblogs?

LS: I was really unaware of the blogging community until Swink came along.

TEV: So was my mother, so don’t feel bad.

LS: There you go. I really was. And now I’m starting to realize it’s a really powerful community. And I think there are blogs and there are blogs. Just like there’s writing and there’s literature. There are different kinds of blogs, some where the writing excellent and where the information is excellent and they have a following. And that’s just as good as a magazine. I’m really thankful to the bloggers, I really am. When we first started out gauging our success, it was kind of like let’s do a Google search on Swink and see what comes up. And in the beginning with had 13 hits. And then after some things started happening, suddenly we’re in the 1300s. And a lot of that was bloggers, talking about the events, talking about the magazine itself.

TEV: When is the scheduled release for issue number two?

LS: September.

TEV: Well, we’re looking forward to it. Thanks for taking the time to talk to me.

LS: Thank you.

****

Join us back here tomorrow for the usual literary links business.

Comments

[Dan Wickett]

Great interview Mark. Sounds like they've got some interesting things going on within their pages. Appreciate your effort with the transcribing!

Enjoy,

[Dan Wickett]

Whoops. Forgot to mention, interesting with M.I.T. That's where Karl Iagnemma went to school as well - great debut short fiction collection last year "On the Nature of Human Romantic Interaction." He's working on a novel now. Who'd have thought?

Enjoy (again),

[dw]

Great interview, thanks for posting.

[Jimmy Beck]

Another home run. Surely she wins the award for Most Amazing Thing To Emerge From Both Bulgarian parents and MIT.

[birnbaum]

Ring-a -ding-ding,

I feel like I am part of the rat pack...

Karl Iagemmna went to the U of Michigan and studied briefly with Chartes Baxter. Dan is correct—Karl's debut story collection isbrilliant

But what's t he big surprise about MIT—Alan Lightman, Elizabeth Cox , Eva Hoffman, this year Junot DIaz—they are all teaching at MIT
are there.

[Old Hag]

As an old, trembling, hagglish woman, I also feel perfectly free to comment on the subtext of all the men's comments-- so pretty! Woo-hoo!

I'm "submitting" right away.

[Robert Nagle]

Sorry if I sound like a nitpicky whiner, but would it have killed you to include a link to swink magazine at the very top of the article? http://www.swinkmag.com/index.html
Thanks for letting the blogging world know about this interesting person and journal.