One thing you learn when working for a literary publication is that the pool of writers is unfathomably large. You are always told it’s a competitive field and that there are a lot of aspiring writers out there, but until you start sifting through a slush pile and start to physically see how many people—promising and less-than-promising—are going after this, it’s hard to give the sheer size of the writing pool any context. So when you see an unknown voice rise up out of that, it feels like some stroke of tremendous fortune. It’s surprising and exciting every time.

—We love our jobs, and are very grateful that The Masters Review sat down with Editor Deena Drewis to talk about hers. Find out how we discover our novellas, and why we remain enthusiastic about the form.

One reason I didn’t name anybody was I like the idea of somebody so insecure about race that he would position people by race, but also because I think the voice is really driving the book in some ways. It’s very voice-centric—very narrator-centric —and in those short pieces it sometimes works better for the characters not to be named, or for them to be referred to by relation to the narrator, because the narrator is so centric that it makes it seem like the story’s filtered through those eyes… READ MORE

(Source: salesses)

People create stories create people; or rather stories create people create stories.

—RIP, Chinua Achebe