"Hook Them With Voice." A Chat with Jamie Poissant & Drew Robertson, Editors of The Florida Review
Lit Mag Reading Club Q & A
Ahoy, maties. I come with tidings of another editor interview, newly wrapped!
Today I had the pleasure of speaking with Jamie Poissant and Drew Robertson, Editor and Senior Associate Editor, respectively, of The Florida Review.
The Florida Review publishes work from around the world from emerging and established writers. We are not Florida-exclusive, though we embrace our state and its many communities. Our magazine is a home for the realistic and the weird alike. We love when the ordinary proves extraordinary or the wild is tamed. We love anything with sentences that sing. We love it all, and we’ve been loving good writing for over 50 years. The Florida Review has been in print since 1972, and in 2017, we added a new literary supplement, Aquifer: The Florida Review Online, which features new work on a biweekly basis, along with author interviews, book reviews, and graphic narratives.
For the magazine’s most recent issue (which we read for our Lit Mag Reading Club), Jamie oversaw a bold and exciting redesign. Jamie described the new iteration of the journal as “a party on the outside, serious literary fiction on the inside.” Those of us who read this latest issue wholeheartedly agreed with this assessment.
In today’s conversation, Jamie and Drew took us through their editorial process, explaining what happens when work comes in through submissions, who reads what, what portion of work is solicited (very little), and what compels them to keep reading past the first few pages.
Jamie described story openings as crucial but cautions writers against leaning too hard into the idea of a “hook.” What he advised is to “hook them with voice” and “a gentle sense of authority.” In the first two pages, he likes to see “evidence of craft,” “narrative control,” a sense that “the writer really has chops” and to feel “compelled by the person speaking to me.”
Drew emphasized the importance of being grounded in a story immediately. Common reasons for rejection include spelling errors as well as an overall sense of vagueness, particularly when it comes to the setting.
Speaking of setting, while Jamie does like to have at least one Florida story in each issue, submissions need not be set in The Sunshine State. Nor do the editors specifically seek to compile work that reflects the spirit and ethos of Florida. As Jamie said, there is vast diversity within the state and “no one Florida.” He added, “We just want to find the best work. Period.”
The Florida Review is highly competitive. They publish fiction, nonfiction and poetry in print two times per year, as well as fiction, nonfiction, poetry, flash fiction, flash nonfiction, comics and reviews online. They get about 6,000 submissions per year, 4,000 of which are fiction.
So what can writers do to really stand out here? What are these editors actively hoping to see more of? What are trends they’re seeing a lot of in submissions right now? What advice do they have for writers yearning to break into this particular journal? And who, by the way, is Jamie’s favorite author?
For all that and more, dear ones, you will have to tune in!
This one is part of our Lit Mag Reading Club. Anyone can become a member any time by signing up as a paying subscriber to Lit Mag News.
To all who came out today to watch the video, thank you for attending! Your faces are the cool breeze on my hot city day, the pleasing aloe on my painful sunburn!
And, of course, thank you to Jamie and Drew for taking us behind the scenes of another lovely little lit mag.
Happy viewing!