Michael: Hello, Rusty. Thank you so much for taking the time to answer my questions. I don’t want to take up too much of your time, so I’ll limit myself to a few hundred. I’ll start with one that anyone could answer by visiting your website. Just how long has Night Train been around?

Rusty: Only a few hundred questions? Sheesh. Rod Siino and I founded Night Train in February 2002, and the first issue came out roughly seven months later. We're in the midst of laying out Issue VI and preparing to send proofs right now.

Michael: I taught at a local college much the same way you did. Did you find that when teaching the students learned from you? Or was it the other way around? How much of your present approach to editing your magazine was affected by teaching?

Rusty: if they don't learn something from you, you need to be fired. What the teacher gets or learns depends on the class you're teaching, I suppose. You get something almost intangible, the sense of a job done well, though when you’re teaching composition, as I was for the larger part of those years, the rewards seem insignificant compared to the workload. For me, teaching nontraditional students, was eye-opening in the extreme, and gave me a fund of material I'm still drawing from. When teaching fiction, certainly you see things you don't do or maybe can't do in your work, and it's humbling and exciting to see that and to be able to respond to and/or push that student in a different direction than they might have gone ordinarily, or without your guidance. The benefit of a writing teacher is that they can often save you some time in learning craft that's less easily absorbed through reading, which has been the typical way writers learn how things work.

Michael: Your subscription guidelines indicate that you take fiction and poetry in “traditional” and “experimental” style. We mere mortals sometimes have trouble with those definitions. What is considered “traditional”?

Rusty: We don’t take poetry at the moment—though that may change— but to answer your question, I would define traditional fiction as simply as possible: the dominant realist mode. To take it further, since I know that's what you want, I would say there are thousands of different variations on the realist mode and often all of them in skilled hands can make a successful story, so when writing, don't think about it so much.

Michael: Bet you thought you were getting away with something by not having to define experimental, didn’t you? So Rusty, just what is “experimental” literature in your mind?

Rusty:  Experimental is what I feel like writing after a day of reading realism: something outside the realist mode, something that takes chances in form or language, something different.

Michael: I was reading some of the stories in your archives and I came up with two questions. First of all, how come you get all these great submissions for your magazine, and I don’t for mine? That’s a rhetorical question and I really don’t want to know the answer. Secondly, I don’t see a lot of genre work. Did I just miss it, or do you consider yourself a mainstream publication?

Rusty: We have not published any genre work per se, that's true The reasons for this are many, but basically the writers we looked to for inspiration were considered 'literary,' and our aims were 'literary' and we wanted to be 'literary' and very much did not want to be ghetto-ized as genre, which unfairly gets little recognition from the 'literary' prize committees. We were (and are) trying to build a reputation which would be helped a great deal by an appearance in those prize anthologies, and we thought our best chance was by going with our stronger suit, which was literary fiction.

All this is my equivocating way of saying that at the beginning, I was uncomfortable with being considered genre, and convinced that realism would be my major mode and interest forever, even though I had begun my career as an avid writer and reader of genre work and continue to be.  We will not be publishing hard science fiction or mystery, but we may very well begin publish more work in a magical-realist or absurdist-urban-fantasy tradition; it depends on what comes to us through the email.

I don't think of us as mainstream at all. We're not John Grisham, nor are we Italo Calvino, speaking of opposite poles, but more in the middle, swayed at any moment by my capricious reading habits and the efforts of our multi-faceted and well-read staff to sway me, at my request. I want my associate editors to push me out of where I'm comfortable. Every day and every story discussion ought to be a challenge of my aesthetics.

Michael: I ask this question to each and every editor. Can’t leave you out, now can I? When you’re reading a story that you think has potential, just what separates the story that you select for publication from the one that “almost made it?”

Rusty: It's the language, for me. Each of us on staff has a different answer, I'm sure. Usually I can tell within a paragraph or less whether someone can write.  I read on only to be confirmed in my view, and to write something helpful to the writer which will enable them, if they choose, to understand more of what I'm looking for on that particular reading day, and possibly help them to understand better what to send us the next time around.

 You see variants on the same thing day after day, but very few stories which make you sit up and take notice. The fact is, many writers are competent, but few have the courage or the spark, the linguistic panache to make you want to publish them. In our case over our six issues, we've accepted maybe 90 of well over 12000 submissions, probably closer to 15000. Chances are slim, everywhere, and you have to have that spark, whether in language or subject matter or plot, something to get my or another editor's attention and hold it for the length of the story.

Michael: You have room in an issue for just one more story. On your desk you have a piece from an internationally famous author who spent the last several years on the NY Times Best-seller list. You read it and wonder how this person ever got published. The grammar sucks and you have no idea what the story is about. Another story is from someone you never heard of, but it’s a great story. Who gets the last slot?

Rusty: The story is the thing, or should be. It's awfully nice though, to have a couple big names on your journal to sell it, and I would like to think when the last dog is hung, I would err on the side of the better story. But I'm often fallible.

Michael: Really? You’d go with the newbie even though thousands of people would pick up your magazine just because of the famous author’s name being on the cover?

Rusty: Ha. Yes. It's an easy decision, or ought to be. Editing a litmag is like writing: no one expects anything from you. You're beholden to nothing but your literary conscience, and you betray that at your own peril.

 Having said that, I would likely promise sexual favors to any author who could get thousands of people to pick up Night Train, but it isn't like that. It's not going to happen.  I would be ecstatic if we sold through 50% of what we printed. Few journals our size do.

Michael: I certainly understand the draw of having a famous author in your pages. How much does having a famous name boost circulation?

Rusty: Little to none? A lot? It's difficult to tell. It hasn't mattered a jot in increasing subscriptions, but probably has increased newsstand sales. It's nice to get famous names, and it certainly helps to promote you to other writers, and to the average litmag reader, if there is such a person who is not also a writer. If they see Famous Writer A in the journal, writers immediately legitimize you, which makes them much more likely to support you via subscription or donation, and most importantly, as a possible home for their work.

Michael: Lately I’ve been reading a bit here and there about the latest writing trend being to deliberately misuse grammar for literary effect. Do you subscribe to this as an acceptable theory? And if so, how can you tell when someone is deliberately misusing grammar and when they simply flunked basic English?

Rusty: Grammar is not to be abused. Except of course, when you have to or when the story needs it. You can usually tell bad writing/grammar issues if you have considerable reading experience or workshop experience. It's just a habit you develop after reading story after story year after year, like learning the common ESL mistakes when teaching composition. You see them all the time and they become immediate flags.

Michael: So how does one my readers go about getting a subscription to your fine magazine?

Rusty: You can visit http://www.nighttrainmagazine.com/subscriptions.html and whip out your plastic, or you can send a paper check if you prefer to 212 Bellingham Avenue #2 Revere MA 02151-4106.

Michael: Well, I can’t think of any more questions, and I know you’re a busy man. Thank you so much for your time, and keep up the great work on an amazing literary accomplishment!

Rusty: Thanks for the opportunity. I hope you don't mind if I take this time to put in a plug for our 50/50 Firebox Fiction Competition, which begins July 1^st and runs through August 31^st and will be judged by Robert Boswell. Visit http:/www.nighttrainmagazine.com/50.html   for more information.