Issue 33 of Clarkesworld Magazine features a round-table interview with “Ten of the top speculative fiction magazine editors,” including Black Gate‘s John O’Neill.

Clarkesworld Magazine, edited by Neil Clarke, Sean Wallace, and Cheryl Morgan, is a 2009 Hugo Award moninee for Best Semiprozine.

It was founded in 2006 and has published fiction by Robert Reed, Jeffrey Ford, Theodora Goss, Stephen Dedman, Rebecca Ore, Jeff VanderMeer, Jay Lake, Mary Robinette Kowal, Catherynne M. Valente, and many others.

The interview also includes Realms of Fantasy‘s Shawna McCarthy, Sheila Williams from Asimov’s Science Fiction, Ann VanderMeer of Weird Tales, Patrick Nielsen Hayden of Tor Books, Cat Rambo from Fantasy Magazine, Mike Resnick from Jim Baen’s Universe, Stanley Schmidt from Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Jason Sizemore of Apex Magazine, and Gordon Van Gelder of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

The interview was ably conducted and assembled by Jeremy L. C. Jones, who states:

Ultimately, fiction editors are the people who mine the slush pile for new voices and who push established writers to grow beyond their previous stories. They read story after story, and more pile up each day. They screen, sort, revise, and reject. They seek the new, the fresh, the familiar, the entertaining, and the weird. They discover and they miss out.

“There is no magic formula,” said Gordon Van Gelder of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. And this holds true for writing stories, submitting stories, and editing stories.

Among other things, Jeremy asked his subjects What are some reasons why you’d reject a good story? and What does “fit” mean for your magazine?

This whole interview is a treasure trove of info for writers, whether you write science fiction, fantasy, or anything else.    — Filling Spaces

You can find the complete interview here.