A few weeks ago, I was invited to Georgia State University to give a talk about the relationship between literary magazine editors and writers. I'm terrible at coming up with titles, but I ended up calling it "War & Peace" because 1. You can't go wrong ripping off Tolstoy and 2. the dynamic between editors and writers, the people who provide the content for the magazine, is often combative. With a mixture of anecdotes and some half-baked ideas, I spent forty-five minutes talking with Georgia State undergraduates, graduates, and faculty (who all come together to produce the terrific magazine, New South) about how a lack of transparency and poor communication makes how what should be a fairly cooperative dynamic is often, instead, quite contentious. I did not use a flamethrower or my Al Pacino voice. I stressed two things. The first is to simply acknowledge the writers and editors. With this magical site called Google, it's very easy to look up any author or …
