Submission Sunday 1.28.24: Editor Interview with Seth Fischer

"The only way I see to move forward is to build our own systems, and to do that, we have to lift up not just ourselves, but the people around us."

Discussed: Los Angeles literary community, trying to be writers in late capitalism, the publishing system, developmental editing vs. copy editing, more than one dead clown, grammar in dialogue, editing your friends, self-help submissions, desperation and entitlement, cover letters, looking into the abyss and having a great time doing it, Denis Johnson, finding new writers, thick skin, feeling your feelings, MFA programs, hustle culture, the academic job market, Submittable, Air/Light, Lawrence Weschler, reading slush, The Southern California Review

For today’s paid post, I’m pleased to share our latest interview with Los Angeles-based writer and editor Seth Fischer, currently Associate Editor at Air/Light. He has been editing books for small publishing houses and individual clients for fifteen years. His writing has twice been listed as notable in The Best American Essays, and his publications have appeared in Guernica, Zocalo Public Square, Slate, Buzzfeed, and elsewhere. He’s been an editor at The Rumpus, Gold Line Press, Air/Light,  and The Nervous Breakdown, and he has been awarded fellowships and residencies by, among others, Ucross, Disquiet, the Jean Piaget Archives, Lambda Literary, and Jentel. Prior to starting the PhD program in Creative Writing and Literature at USC, he taught at UCLA-Extension Writer’s Program and Antioch University Los Angeles, where he also received his MFA. 

⫸ Check out earlier interviews with editors Yennie Cheung of The Coachella Review, Lauren Westerfield of Split/Lip Press and Blood Orange Review, and Anita Gill of Hypertext Magazine & Review ⫷

SS: Thank you for agreeing to answer some questions about being an editor for Submission Sunday. Usually I talk about how I first met the interview subject here, but I feel like I've known you for many, many years—probably first as part of the LA literary community, but then we worked together at Writing Workshops Los Angeles, and now we work together at Air/Light! I've been thinking a lot about the literary community in LA and I wonder if I could first ask you what roles you think networking and literary citizenship play in the submission game?

SF: Of course! I love Submission Sunday. Thank you so much for doing this. I love reading it, and it gives me all kinds of ideas about submissions. I’m going to Ragdale this year because Submission Sunday reminded me of the deadline!

SS: Yay!!

SF: The short answer to your question is: everything! Or rather, community is everything. When I first got to LA, I was so enamored with the literary community here. So many people were here raising each other up, and I think that is still the case, though rising rents, increased competition, and decreasing money in the literary world have made it a little harder. Still, I’ve never lived in a place with so much writerly talent that is at the same time so welcoming. And so many people we worked with back then have reached such huge levels of success, in tons of different forms. It’s a pleasure to see.

I think that the secret to our community’s success has been, at least in part, a refusal to get lost in a marketing-centered kind of community. I have to say I don’t love thinking in terms of networking. If I could figure out a way to take transactional thought and language out of the literary community, I would in a second. But here we are, trying to be writers in late capitalism, so I’m not sure how possible that is.

But what I think is possible is to think of yourself less as an individual writer, and more as a writer in a system. Of course you want to get your writing in the world! But you have to exist in a system, and the publishing system that exists is, to be frank, kind of a broken one. So the only way I see to move forward is to build our own systems, and to do that, we have to lift up not just ourselves, but the people around us. Especially people who are taking the kinds of subversive risks that the mainstream market so loves to ignore.

---

SS: You were one of the founding editors at The Rumpus, you worked at Gold Line Press, and you did developmental editing for the publishers Rare Bird, Stillhouse, and Jaded Ibis. You taught developmental editing at UCLA Extension, and you've edited at The Nervous Breakdown. You also founded a journal in graduate school and guest edited at some other venues. Could you tell us a little about the different types of editing (line, developmental, copy, guest)? I'm in some Facebook editing groups and I find that there is a lot of confusion.