Treehouse

Our free Literary Loot Contest for Unusual Prose is accepting entries right now, with a sweet prize supplied by a collaboration of literary magazines, journals, and indie presses:
A Strange Object   •   Barrelhouse   •   Booth   •   Carolina Quarterly   •   Dzanc Books   •   Ecotone   •   Gigantic   •   Gulf Coast   •   Mud Luscious Press   •   PANK Magazine   •   REAL: Regarding Arts and Letters

Our nonfiction editor Casey Mills interviewed editors Lincoln Michel and James Yeh of Gigantic. In keeping with the nature of their magazine—“short prose, interviews, and art”—this is a flash interview; all answers are 15 words or less.

Q: I’ll give you fifteen words (and a pro bono colon) to answer the following. Gigantic’s aesthetic:

A: Unlovely, urgent, unexpected, explosive, elliptical, enigmatic… And that’s just the Us and Es.

Q: Name a piece that you guys recently published that fits the right side of the above colon.

A: Ideally, they all do.

Q: If Tolstoy wanted to submit War and Peace to Gigantic, what would you tell him about his obvious word count issue?

A: We’d Gordon Lish it down to a paragraph. (Or else 700-word excerpts for the next 100 years.)

Q: What sets Gigantic apart from other top-notch publications?

A: Aesthetic rigor, lax publishing schedule, fun parties, and unusually nice totes?

Q: How do you think the emergence of online publishing has influenced new forms of experimental writing?

A: More access for readers, less money for writers.

Q: What is the shortest story you have ever published?

A: Kenny Aquiles’s “People I Don’t Like”: four words—the title—and around twenty phone numbers.

Q: The best (or worst) thing about being an editor?

A: Worst: having to say no so many more times than yes.
Best: trade secret.

Q: If you stumbled upon Hemingway’s yard sale, would you buy the baby shoes?

A: Why not? Never worn, right?

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