Editor’s Note: We asked one of our sumer 2011 interns, Jacob Lancaster, to share his perspective on working in the Iowa Review office—and got more than we bargained for.
In an honest confession of my naïveté, I thought literary journals were Beethoven and dry toast. Straight tea parties. I imagined some quill pen society of white guys or poorly lit rooms with people in Kerouac costumes, with those pensive, deep-stare poet faces, each sipping Earl Grey, each with their own spiraling gyres.
However, the Review’s office is devoid of Victorian furniture and ashtrays and wine decanters, and it’s actually quite tiny. Not in the Smart Car, I’m-accepting-this-little-thing-to-better-the-earth tiny, but more like How-do-you-seriously-fit-twenty-four-readers-in-here-at-one-time? tiny.
