Exciting Feedback

I'm currently guest editing a special issue of The Journal of the Short Story in English (JSSE) on Joyce Carol Oates's short fiction. It should be online in July and out in print in September. I came up with an idea for a collective written interview with Oates for which each contributor to the issue would submit two questions. I pitched it to her agent and Oates agreed to the exercise. When the questions came in, I organized them thematically and sent them off with the contributor bios and a note about which work each person was writing about for the issue. Oates's replies came back to me on Thursday. She clearly looked at the bios as many of her answers are tailored to things the contributors have worked on. And many of her answers are quite long. The interview is going to tie the issue together in quite a coherent fashion! In exchanging with her agent, he wrote, "Her responses to your inquires were — in my experience — especially substantive….." I'm honored.