Notes from Crew Quarters: Who's Reading This?

This week, we asked our editors: If you had the opportunity to have your work read by one person, who would it be?

Annie Bilancini, Associate Fiction Editor

Out loud? Vincent Price. Quietly to themselves? Malala Yousafzai.

Amy Hansen, Associate Poetry Editor

My gran. She put me through college, even when I dropped a very practical major to study writing instead. She passed away before I wrote anything I wanted to share, but I wish she could see that I'm doing the thing.

Ben Kinney, Associate Fiction Editor

Since I was an undergrad, I've had a fantasy of Stephen King reading something I wrote and telling me he was entertained by it. He's currently in his late sixties, and although he's healthy (and hopefully will write for at least the next thirty years), one of my main drives for writing things now is to make sure he will someday know who I am.

Stephen Wardell, Associate Poetry Editor

Every night at bedtime I want Werner Herzog to dictate to me everything I've written that day. Then tuck me in.

Patricia Killelea, Poetry Editor

Paul Celan and Jim Morrison, but not at the same time.

wait... yes: at the same time.

Jacque Boucher, Spoken Word Poetry 

I want Justin McElroy to read every bad poem I've ever written trying to joke about my (sometimes-crippling) anxiety. Then maybe fistbump me. I'm not sure what the proper way of communicating solidarity over these things is.

Jen Howard, Editor-in-Chief 

Sometimes the people I want to read my stories and the people I hope never read my stories are the same people.