Stephen Corey

Stephen Corey is the author of four full-length collections of poetry, the latest being There Is No Finished World (White Pine Press, 2003), and six chapbooks.  His poems, essays, reviews, and articles have appeared in dozens of periodicals and anthologies, among them The American Poetry Review, The Southern Review, Shenandoah, The Kenyon Review, Yellow Silk, The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses, and The ‘Poetry’ Anthology, 1912-2002.  He has co-edited three books in as many genres, most recently (with Warren Slesinger) Spreading the Word: Editors on Poetry (The Bench Press, 2001).  He has worked as a literary editor for nearly 35 years, first with The Devil’s Millhopper from 1976-1983, and since then with The Georgia Review, where he currently serves as editor.  He lives in Athens, Georgia and serves as Editor-in-Residence in the Rainier Writing Workshop.

Editor in Residence. Mentor. Workshops and classes in nonfiction and poetry.

Statement: “I am an editor because I am a writer; I am a writer because at some point–I believe I was in my mid-twenties–simply taking in the world no longer seemed enough, and because I have crazy but loving dreams of whacking a few readers in the gut the way my favorite writers have whacked me. I try to edit via compassionate insinuation [from the Latin insinuare: to introduce by windings and turnings], doing my best to enter the intention and spirit of a piece to determine how it might be finished more completely and accurately. But I also edit via compassionate fiat, because some things just don’t work if you fail to handle them thoughtfully enough. In one sense, I suppose, there’s what a good editor must strive to be: thoughtful enough. And, I would argue, good writers must be so as well. Once I sat at a dinner gathering of writers and said, ‘For a piece of writing to be genuinely great, someone has to want to kill you for having written it.’ This isn’t true, of course, but I think it’s next door to something that needs to be true.”