[Julie Steiner]

I digress (as usual), but Allen, this essay will stomp hard on that dream of getting published in the New Yorker:

http://www.themontrealreview.com/200...hort-Story.php

The main bit:

Twenty years ago, fiction editor, Chip McGrath, said the magazine received about 400 short stories per week and published one or two from the slush pile annually. At this time, they were publishing two stories (occasionally three) per weekly issue, or 112 per year. So, calculating at 1.5 acceptances for 22,400 yearly submissions, the outsider had a .0000669% chance of entering the Castle.

Today's [note 2012 date of this essay] fiction editor, Deborah Treisman, has not revealed current body count. Outside source estimates vary from 2,000 to 4,000 per month. (6) So let's say 3,000. Since the Tina Brown reign, only one story is run per issue, not two. So, calculating at 1.5 acceptances for 36,000 yearly submissions, the outsider now might have a .0000416% chance of breaking into America's last premiere short fiction venue. Except Brown's fiction editor, Bill Buford, admitted to taking nothing from the slush: so, during his tenure in the eighties and nineties; chances were .0000%

Who are the other 99.9999% to 100%?

The writers on the Castle's tennis ladder.

At the top are Nobel or Booker recipients, some deceased. Next, come the Franchises: Munro, Trevor, Boyle, Erdrich, Saunders, Proulx etc. (7) At Rung 3, are the MFA wunderkinds and up-and-comers from Knopf and FSG. Below them are the Ivy League staffers and fact-checkers for The magazine itself. At Level 5, are those recommended by those above or their acquaintances. And, holding anchor are the annual 36,000. The Lotto players.


(6) 2,000: Crain's New York Business. 4,000: The Morning News

(7) Of the 514 stories published in the last decade, 215 (42%) were written by 28 writers. (The Millions, January 4, 2011)

Granted, that's for short stories, but I assume the situation with regard to the New Yorker's poetry slush pile makes the chances of getting into Poetry seem like a sure thing by comparison. (Full disclosure: I've long since given up on that, too.)