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Editor Interview: Thieves Jargon

This interview is provided for archival purposes. The listing is not currently active.

Q: Describe what you publish in 25 characters or less.

A: Tight & Strange

Q: What other current publications (or publishers) do you admire most?

A: A few publications I consistently enjoy reading are Exquisite Corpse, The Dream People, Yeti Magazine, and Smokelong Quarterly.

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

A: I primarily handle fiction, but I'd rather list books than authors:
Dennis Cooper's Frisk, God, Jr., and The Ugly Man
Seeing Eye by Michael Martone
John Fahey's How Bluegrass Music Destroyed My Life
Donald Barthelme's Sixty Stories or Forty Stories
Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son
George Saunders' Pastoralia
George V. Higgins' The Friends of Eddie Coyle
Herman Melville's The Confidence Man
Don DeLillo's Running Dog

Q: What sets your publication apart from others that publish similar material?

A: We don't care about strong characters, Magical Realism, and second-person perspectives. We like things gritty and strange, but we try to avoid weird and quirky things.

Q: What is the best advice you can give people who are considering submitting work to your publication?

A: We're not McSweeney's and we're not The Paris Review and we're not The New Yorker.

Q: Describe the ideal submission.

A: The best fiction submissions tend to be between 1,000 and 3,000 words, get right to the point, and be experimental in some way.

Q: What do submitters most often get wrong about your submissions process?

A: If you've we've never published you, we ask that you mention something from our archives that you've liked or disliked. Many forget to do this.

Q: How much do you want to know about the person submitting to you?

A: I read the cover letters and credits, but they don't make much of a difference.

Q: If you publish writing, how much of a piece do you read before making the decision to reject it?

A: I read most to the end, but if someone clearly has no idea what we're about, I won't waste my time.

Q: What additional evaluations, if any, does a piece go through before it is accepted?

A: Well, I've never had a situation in which I suspected plagiarism. Occasionally I'll do some mild fact-checking to make sure the author has his facts straight.

Q: What is a day in the life of an editor like for you?

A: We read submissions. We reject a lot of them.

Q: How important do you feel it is for publishers to embrace modern technologies?

A: Modern technologies reflect how people find and consume information and entertainment. If you're providing these things, you need to be aware.