Joe Fassler, Author at The Lit Show

Interview with Becky Tuch, editor of The Review Review

By Joe Fassler On March 27, 2013 · Blog, Q and A

Ask a magazine editor what they're looking for in submissions, and they'll likely give a simple response: read what we publish. You should still do that, but you might consider supplementing with something else, too—The Review Review, a literary magazine that reviews, well, other literary magazines.

The project was created by Becky Tuch, who wanted to create a resource that would help writers stay on top of the vast and always-changing world of journal publishing. "With over 600 print and online journals," she says in her site's mission statement, "it can be hard to know where to begin." But the Review Review does writers an invaluable service by sifting through the monthly glut of lit mags, praising the best and decrying the worst.

Individual journal issues are reviewed like books or albums, and the selection and presentation are evaluated closely before the whole production's assigned a grade. Reading through, it's easy to get a sense of who's publishing what each month or quarter, what kind of job they're doing, and whether you might want to read, buy, or submit work. Especially illuminating are The Review Review's interviews with editors, which tend go beyond the stern advice "Just read us."

Your decision to start a site that reviews literary magazines, paradoxically, grew out of a frustration with the world of literary magazines. How would you describe what you were feeling in 2008, before you founded The Review Review?

Overwhelmed! I felt that there was just this forest of literature and I had no way of navigating through it. But also, I was curious. I really wanted to know what was so great and important about these journals. I was hungry for everything that was inside of them. So my interest in reading them was partly frustration, and partly just real desire to explore them.

At the time, I was also thinking of going back to school to get an MA in Literature. So I was hungry not just to be reading more, but to be thinking about and discussing literature in a critical and focused way. As a writer, you read so much and get inspired in so many different ways, and often you feel like, “Hey. I just read this amazing scene. Who can I talk to about it?”

So all these needs fused in my mind at once (in the midst of waiting tables!) and I realized I wanted to start a site where I could provide much-needed information for writers while also satisfying my own intellectual cravings.

Interview with Becky Tuch, editor of The Review Review

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