Thank goodness for that. From Kate Petersen’s interview with Caitlin Horrocks at The Rumpus:
I once had a really aggravating conversation at a writer’s conference with someone who complained that publishing was all about connections and networking. I said that I genuinely believed that great work got recognized. He said sure, great work would, but it was unfair that merely good stories got published based on who the author knew. I thought, who wants to sit around writing good-but-not-great stories, and then try to network their way to publication? What a soul-killing way to spend time, and betrayal of whatever drives us to write in the first place.
This interview is fantastic. Read it now. And if haven’t read This Is Not Your City yet, what on earth are you waiting for?
Laurie Ann Cedilnik is a writer living in Houston by way of Queens. She has an MFA from The University of Houston, where she was an Inprint C. Glen Cambor Fellow and Editor of Gulf Coast. Her stories can be found in the Colorado Review, Epoch, West Branch, The Antioch Review, Pleiades, Cimarron Review, The Rumpus, Brevity, Hobart, and Fifth Wednesday, and her story collection Queens’ Finest was one of two runners-up for the Flannery O’Connor Prize. Laurie’s writing has received awards including a Tennessee Williams Scholarship from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, a Bobet Fellowship, and Gwen Frostic Prizes in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Laurie is a graduate of Wellesley College and Hunter College High School, and has taught creative writing at Loyola University (New Orleans), Grand Valley State, and Western Michigan University, where she earned a PhD in English Literature and Creative Writing.
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