First off, some very exciting news. My story, “Triplet,” has been selected for the anthology 2009 BEST AMERICAN NONREQUIRED READING. Dave Eggers was editor, Marjane Satrapi wrote the introduction and, as of two days ago, the book was featured in displays in every bookstore I went into.

Which brings me to the next point which is that my story was originally published by anderbo.com, which is an on-line literary magazine edited by Rick Rofihe. One of the subjects my students spend a lot of time talking about, especially toward the end of term, is what do editors want. So, I asked Rick some questions about that and here are his answers:

SB:  Can you describe Anderbo in three words?
RR:  Fiction. Poetry. “fact”.
 
SB: How many submissions do you get and how many do you publish?
RR: We put up about one poet every 3 weeks; one short story every 5 weeks; and one non-fiction (”fact”) piece every 8 weeks. The anderbo.com  acceptance rate is less than 1% overall; probably we receive submissions from 10 poets (up to 6 poems each) daily, along with, say, 4 story submissions and 1 “fact”. We have a LOT of editors weighing in on the fiction, editors who are pretty much more analytical and articulate than I’ll ever be.
 
SB: What qualities does the ideal Anderbo story have?
RR: They’re not what I call “situational/ensemble”; that is, the protagonist gets most — maybe 85% — of the story’s word-space. The light’s on the main character most of the time in the site’s best stories, I think.
 
SB: Do you ever like something, but think it’s not quite there and give the author suggestions?
RR: I might try to lead them to water: only sometimes do they drink….
 
SB: Do you publish works by debut authors?
RR:  Most seem to be. Of all those ones so far, probably Kayla Soyer-Stein’s work was most instantly-astonishing to me: her poem, “To My Landlord”  and her novella, “We Were There and Now We’re Here”

SB: What sort of work would you like to see more of?
RR: Good, well-structured, 1500- to 2500-word stories are not as plentiful as I’d hoped….