Issue #17

Some excerpts from Issue 17:

I did editorial work. I worked in Boston at the Writer magazine. I worked in Harlem at a fair-housing program. I did public-relations writing. I did proofreading. I taught freshman comp at Hunter College. And I did some translations. I did lots of things. But none of it was writing.—Lynn Sharon Schwartz, interviewed by Nancy Middleton

For a long time, all I really wanted to do was write one successful short story. I mean, that was my life goal.—Roy Parvin

But what that means is that you can’t then put your work in a hierarchy. You can’t value one more than the other, because they’re all failures in that essential sense, and you have to look at them that way and forgive them.—Russell Banks, interviewed by Rob Trucks.

If a writer can illuminate some truths through well-delineated characters in a compelling plot, then that writer has done the best possible job a writer can do.—Mary McGarry Morris