#whitney terrell

[minoritiesinpublishing]

Everything You’ve Ever Wanted to Know About Lit Mags (and Likely More)

In this episode of the Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast, editors Brigid Hughes of A Public Space and Jennifer Baker of Electric Literature and the Minorities in Publishing podcast discuss the world of l…

Many thanks to VV and Whitney for talking to me during AWP last week for their @lithub Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast! Listen in on craft discussions and what literary magazine life is like!

VVG: So it sounds like you’re giving feedback when you’re rejecting people. When you accept something, what kind of editorial work do you do with the writers whose work you accept and going to publish?

JB: I line edit. I’m a line editor by nature. And that’s my full-time job. I do managing editorial. So I go in and I actually highlight areas and say, “You said this, and now you’re contradicting yourself,” or “I Googled this, and you said that no one read her book but she was on 10 ‘best books’ lists so how does that translate to what you’re saying . . . ” “You intro’d this and you made it very personal, and then you totally extract yourself from the rest of the essay . . . ” “This is a lot of passive voice versus active voice…I would change for this . . .” So I do very, very specific line edits in that sense.

[abookcover]

[therumpus]

A lot of times, those convoys didn’t have an infantry escort. They could be out there on their own. I realized that this was thing that not a lot of people were talking about at the time. For me that seemed like a story. Now, since then, since it took me so damn long to write the book, a lot of people have come out with really good nonfiction about women in the military! [Laughs] I think it’s important to give them a shout out. The books I think are good, and that the soldiers I knew were reading—Helen Benedict has written a book called The Lonely Soldier. Kirsten Holmstedt has a book called Band of Sisters: American Women at War in Iraq. Helen Thorpe has written a book about this. Kayla Williams has written a memoir called Love My Rifle More Than You. There’s a lot of nonfiction writing about this that I’m very supportive of. It’s very important. My story is just one story that’s a part of this narrative. There’s a larger canvas that begins to include women in combat roles as a part of these conflicts.

The Rumpus Interview with Whitney Terrell.

[fsgbooks]

Because The Good Lieutenant focuses on a female soldier, Lieutenant Emma Fowler, I realized early on that I was going to rely on the expertise of the many women who’d fought and served in Iraq—as well as the men.

Watch “Behind the Scenes of the Good Lieutenant,” by Whitney Terrell, author of The Good Lieutenant.