>Thoughts on the Survey

>One reason I asked people about their litmag preferences was that I’m always re-evaluating both my subscriptions and my submissions. I’m assuming that the answers reflect where the respondents would like their work to appear. I’d gladly subscribe to all the top 20 magazines; I’d be thrilled to have my work appear in any of them.

Beyond that, I’m not sure we can take the list too seriously. One reader asked how Chiron Review, a magazine now defunct, made the list. The answer there is that because I weighted the votes and Chiron got one 1st place ballot, it ended up in the 11-way tie for 21st. Another reader said he would have put A Public Space on the list. A first place vote for APS would have been enough to crack the top 25 [32 because of the tie], but the fact is none of the 26 or so other respondents mentioned it at all, so it wasn’t even on the expanded list of 57 magazines receiving votes. I believe APS is still too new to be in readers’ consciousness, but what about other fine magazines that received no votes at all: Gettysburg Review, Glimmer Train, Agni, Indiana Review, Mississippi Review, New England Review, and others. Conjunctions, which is very, very high on my Pushcart Prize list, received only one mention and so it didn’t make the top 25 of this list. (But it’s an amazing magazine.)

Conclusions? I need to get hold of copies, if not subscriptions, for some of these magazines that I have not yet seen. Epoch, for example–high on the Pushcart Prize list, and in the top 25 here. And it might be time to subscribe to Ninth Letter.

About the author

I am the author of three novels--THE LAST BIRD OF PARADISE, OLIVER'S TRAVELS, and THE SHAMAN OF TURTLE VALLEY--and three story collections--IN AN UNCHARTED COUNTRY, HOUSE OF THE ANCIENTS AND OTHER STORIES, and WHAT THE ZHANG BOYS KNOW, winner of the Library of Virginia Literary Award for Fiction. I am also the co-founder and former editor of Prime Number Magazine and the editor of the award-winning anthology series EVERYWHERE STORIES: SHORT FICTION FROM A SMALL PLANET.

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