What does it take to get out of the slush pile and into the table of contents? To find out, I interviewed the editors of three of the top markets in short science fiction–Gordon Van Gelder, editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction; Sheila Williams, editor of Asimov’s Science Fiction, and Susan Marie Groppi, editor of Strange Horizons.

Gordon Van Gelder is the editor and publisher of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. He took over as editor of the magazine in January 1997, then took on the role of publisher as well in October 2000. As a teenager, Van Gelder published a number of short stories in anthologies such as 100 Great Fantasy Short-Short Stories and Bruce Coville’s Book Of Spine Tinglers, but put his writing career on hold to pursue his editing career, which started with a summer internship with Bluejay Books. Later, he worked for twelve years as an editor at St. Martin’s Press, and went on to edit several anthologies, including In Lands That Never Were and Fourth Planet From the Sun.

Sheila Williams is the editor of Asimov’s Science Fiction. She’s been with the magazine since the summer of 1982, starting as an editorial assistant and taking over as editor in April 2004. She received her Master’s degree in philosophy from Washington University, and moved to New York in 1981 to pursue a career in publishing. In addition to her experience at Asimov’s, she is also the editor of more than two dozen anthologies, such as A Woman’s Liberation and Intergalactic Mercenaries. She doesn’t write fiction, and has no plans to do so in the future, but her editorial experience allows her keen insight into what works and what doesn’t.

Susan Marie Groppi is the editor-in-chief of Strange Horizons. Groppi joined the staff as a fiction editor shortly after the magazine’s launch in September 2000, and took over as editor-in-chief in 2003. In addition to her editorial work, she has a Ph.D. in History and is a lecturer at UC Berkeley. She doesn’t write much fiction–she calls her one fiction publication in the magazine Flytrap an "aberration"–but she does often write critical non-fiction. Prior to joining Strange Horizons, Groppi worked as an editorial assistant at Circlet Press. She is the co-editor of the anthology 20 Epics (with David Moles), and is currently one of the resident editors for the Online Writing Workshop (sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com).

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