New upstreet Fiction Editor

Beginning with the upcoming eighth issue, Joyce A. Griffin of Suffern, NY, will be upstreet’s Fiction Editor. She replaces Robin Oliveira, who held this position for the previous five issues.

Joyce holds a BA in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College and an MFA in Fiction Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts, Montpelier, where she  worked with authors Mary Grimm, Phyllis Barber, and Lawrence Sutin, among others. She is Managing Editor of The Hastings Center Report and IRB: Ethics & Human Research, journals published by The Hastings Center, a bioethics research institute in Garrison, NY. Her fiction has been published in The Berkshire Review and upstreet (“Bits and Pieces,” number one, and “Michael Ryan,” number three). She has been an Assistant Fiction Editor at upstreet for the past two years, and has a novel in progress whose working title is How High the Moon. She and her husband, Michael Mittelman, have a five-year-old daughter, Zooey, and are expecting their second child in September.

Asked to comment on what she would look for in a fiction submission, Joyce said: “What I want to read is a story whose author has spent enough time with it to make it work on every level so that its seams are invisible and what is uniquely wonderful about it can shine through as clearly as possible. I want upstreet to publish the kind of story that envelops me—the kind that makes me forget on its first page that I am reading for upstreet, and instead, just lets me read.”

Submissions for upstreet number eight will open September 1, and close March 1, 2012. For detailed guidelines, and to submit, please visit the upstreet website.