Words of wisdom (sort of)

On getting published in journals

Stern: When your work is circulated to a subscriber base as large as The New Yorker’s, I think you can safely consider this a benchmark of success.

Strauss: It depends on the journal. The New Yorker is as much a fantasy for young writers as playing for the Yankees would be for a different breed of kid. But there are well-respected journals whose circulation is so low, you’d be shocked.

Ames: If you’re on NPR—This American Life, for example—and you’re published in The New Yorker, then you’re just about guaranteed to make a living as a writer. My fiction has always been a little too depraved for both. My goal is to come up with a caption for one of the cartoons in The New Yorker. I think that’s my best chance for getting in.

Lin: I feel success in some way when I am published in Noon. But I would feel funny being published by The New Yorker—it wouldn’t make sense for the kind of fiction I write.

Park: I’d love to get published in either McSweeney’s or The New Yorker. But I also liked getting published in small journals, some of which—Crowd and 6,500—seemed to fold after my pieces appeared.

NEXT: GRANTS »

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The authors

Jonathan Ames
Essayist (I Love You More than You Know) and novelist (Wake Up, Sir!)

Tao Lin
Novelist, poet (Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy), blogger

Fiona Maazel
Author of Last Last Chance

Ed Park
The Believer coeditor and author of Personal Days

Christopher Sorrentino
Author of Sound on Sound and the NBA-nominated Trance

Amanda Stern
Curator of the Happy Ending Series and author of The Long Haul

Darin Strauss
Novelist (Chang and Eng and More than It Hurts You)

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Time Out New York / Issue 669 : Jul 22–30, 2008

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1. Posted by anonniemuss on Sun, May 10, at 08:49pm

   This is an interesting feature and that makes it all the more annoying that it is chopped up into tiny bits and pieces over 8 pages. It's maddening to read and I can't understand why a publication would discourage readers this way. I am not a regular reader of this website and I am not coming back because of this.

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