Catch Up with The Editors: Dina, Senior Editor

This week we're checking back in with Weird Lit Senior Editor and Operations Manager Dina. Hear her best advice for publishing weird stories with us, her least favorite narrative POV, and all about upcoming goals for the magazine in the conversation below.

What’s been the most rewarding thing about running a literary magazine?

Reading all of these crazy-ass stories! What an honor it’s been. The work is its own reward. Getting to know awesome writers and other literary magazine editors also has been so enriching.

Metaphorical photo: reading story submissions

Favorite story you’ve published so far, and why?

There are at least three stories vying for runner-up, but the clear winner for me is “Transmission” by Gene Wang. Like so many of my favorite stories (“For Esmé, with Love and Squalor” by Salinger, “How to Become a Writer” by Moore, “Cathedral” by Carver, and others), “Transmission” makes me weep every time I read it. Sometimes just thinking about those stories makes me cry. And not because they’re sad, but because they’re beautiful. Once in a while you come upon a story that feels written for you, a stranger. It’s a mystical sensation, and is one of the top reasons I write fiction—perhaps one day someone will feel that way about something I produce.

What moods or genres of short fiction are you excited by?

Done well, nonsense literature like this thrills my brain. Experimental stuff, rewarding puzzles, and especially humor are all genres I crave. The catch is they have to actually tell a story and make me feel something, which all of those examples do marvelously. 

What advice do you have for submitters who want to have their work published in WLM? 

Aside from competent, engaging prose, please make sure it’s weird. Can’t believe I need to say this, but the fact is we’ve gotten quite a few stories we thought were really good but they weren’t weird. It’s like, why did you send us this? Weird is a loose term, but you know it when you see it. I want the really out-there stuff. I continue to want to see your weird little baby.

What is a really hard sell for you in a submitted story? 

Second-person POV. I fucking hate it. I usually reject those stories outright and one of the other editors has to pass something they found good by me again. But when it works, it really works. The "you" has to make sense in context and have a purpose. Read Self-Help by Lorrie Moore to see how it’s done. 

Unpopular opinion about writing or publishing, go: 

A lot of literary fiction is flat-out boring and worse, depressing. Is it because of the workshop mills that we see the same ol' yik-yak in a lot of the big magazines? Do editors have a fear of taking risks with experimental or outlandish stuff? Why do so many of these stories sound like FutureCanoe is narrating them in my head? Fiction can be fun while also enlightening and moving. That's the kind of stuff I'm looking to publish.

What are your goals for the next year of Weird Lit Mag? 

The first is revenue so we can pay authors and get something into print. Probably something small at first but a physical artifact is so satisfying and it's one of the whole team's top goals. Second, continuing to build our weirdo community. And third, personally, working on enhancing the site with new features. Stay tuned!

Dina Dwyer is a writer, editor, and visual media artist living in Seattle. Her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in december magazine, Midway Journal, Tupelo Quarterly, the Ocean State Review, and Wallstrait. You can view her work here.