Kirsty Logan

I am called Kirsty and my co-editor is called Helen. Our names are displayed on our magazine’s website. Our names are women’s names.

Generally, this is not an issue. I do not know if writers notice or care that they are submitting work to a magazine run by two women. However, occasionally writers find it necessary to make note of our gender. They use phrases like “‘you ladies wanted to read more of my work” or “perhaps you girls will like this story.”

I’m sure none of the people who write these phrases are reading this essay, but if they are I’d like to make it clear that if you use such a phrase, I will not like your story. This is true in the same way that I will not like your story if it features dragons or World War I, or if it contains the words akin or ponder. It’s not that I’ll reject your story just because I don’t like you; it’s that the presence of certain elements (such as “you girls,” or dogs, or funerals) set off my Bad Writer Radar. Rejection is nothing personal, except that this time maybe it is a bit personal, because you just made it personal.

Literary magazine editors are not better than non-editors. We are just people who have chosen to spend our free time putting a bunch of stories out into the world because we think they’re amazing enough to share. But we’re also not someone you’re sitting next to in your local pub. Try to show some respect, if you wish to receive respect in return. As editors, Helen and I try to show writers respect. We always use their names rather than using form rejections, and we always check we have spelled those names correctly. If we have anything useful to say about the stories, we will provide comments. We are writers as well as editors, and know how it feels to be on the other side of a rejection letter. We are respectful to writers, and we appreciate respect in return. Referring to someone who you want to publish your work as “you girls” shows a staggering lack of respect.

Perhaps this happens to male editors too. Perhaps they receive emails addressed “hey guys,” suggesting that ‘you blokes’ might like their story. Even then, it wouldn’t be quite the same. Although guys and blokes might be a bit too informal, it doesn’t suggest superiority the way that”‘you girls” does. An equivalent might be “you little boys,” though it’s so hugely unlikely that any writer however disconnected from reality would address editors as “little boys” in a submission letter that it’s not even worth discussing. But then, I would have thought “‘you girls” hugely unlikely too, so perhaps it is worth considering.

By referring to us in this belittling way, writers are suggesting that we are little girls with a little project. “They started their own wee magazine, isn’t that just too cute?” However writers might address male editors, I can’t think of a manner that fully encompasses this attitude. Although I don’t like to think that our gender matters to our work as editors, incidents like this make me want to go by my gender-neutral initials.

There is one way that my gender does affect how I do my editing work, and that is content. I recently rejected a story that the author told me was about, “a woman facing the terrible predicament of not being able to meet a nice man.” Sure, I rejected it because it was badly-written and boring and didn’t fit well with the other stories in the magazine. But I also rejected it because I don’t care about finding a nice man, and I’m not interested in reading about women who consider not being able to meet one a “terrible predicament.” Maybe that’s because I’m a bitter man-hating dyke, or maybe it’s because I’m a demanding reader and do not want to read clichéd and unsurprising literature.

As an editor, I do not care about writers’ gender or sexuality; I’m just interested in exciting short fiction. But I’m a woman and I’m queer and I’m a feminist. As such, I’m more likely to be interested in characters that I can identify with and themes that I agree with. I’m highly unlikely to publish anything misogynistic or homophobic, no matter how well written it is. That’s not to say that I’ll only publish women, or that I only want liberal viewpoints, or that I only want stories about periods and miscarriages and torrid lesbian love affairs. But stories are accepted or rejected based on whether or not I like them, and, with such arbitrary guidelines, it would be silly to claim that my personal life doesn’t affect my judgment. As an editor, I don’t claim to be an objective judge of what is good and what is bad; no editor should claim this. Each editor accepts work that they like, and rejects work that they do not.

Helen and I are not women editors; we are editors who happen to be women. Our magazine is not a magazine by women—exactly half of our first issue is written by female writers and half by men, though this wasn’t planned. It’s also not a magazine for women, though we hope that plenty of female readers will like our content. But it would be facetious to suggest that who we are as people does not affect the work we like as editors. Every editor has subjective views on literature, and that is part of what gives each literary magazine its own tone and personality.

A magazine edited by two queer women might, in theory, have a more female-positive outlook in its content than some other magazines. We are interested in minority voices, but we won’t reject work just because it’s from a heteronormative viewpoint. I do not treat writers differently based on who they are; all I care about is the words they write. I would like to receive the same consideration as an editor.

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Forthcoming: “You Girls (pt. 2)”—notes from the other half of Fractured West.