Alice Quinn Champions Discovery in Course on Editorial Vision

Adjunct Professor Alice Quinn has been a mainstay in Columbia’s Writing program for 35 years, and a defining figure in poetry for the last half century.  

Her career as an editor began at Alfred A. Knopf, where she worked from 1972 to 1986, establishing their poetry series in 1980. She then served as poetry editor for The New Yorker from 1987 to 2007, and as the Executive Director for the Poetry Society of America from 2001 to 2019. 

Her body of work features a murderer’s row of generational talents: names like Alice Munro, Tobias Wolff, and Steven Millhauser (CC ’65); and she’s currently working on an edition of Elizabeth Bishop’s notebooks for FSG.   

Even for her accolades, Quinn’s pedagogy remains an organic extension of a career spent in search of new voices. She makes no delineation between rigorous craft in the classroom and the workplace, even when that workplace includes the top names in publishing. The basis is discovery, and everything is on the table.     

This spring she’s teaching the latest variation of her class on editing, Editorial Vision & (Your) Practice. The class is an open invitation for young artists considering an editorial career, including the means and methods of creating a literary journal, and the day-to-day experiences of real editors working in the field. 

The class begins with sessions dedicated to the disciplines of poetry, fiction, and essays. In these initial meetings, students are exposed to the core tenets of the editorial process, the vision and curation required to seek out emerging talents, the rigor to read widely and know what’s out there, and the commitment to finding pieces they're passionate about.    

In these early classes, Alice also pulls from her storied career, demonstrating her own process of discovery, the intuition and labor of love that shepherded so many unknowns onto the world stage of literature. In this seeking period, the class studies both beloved publications and new discoveries, from The New Yorker, now celebrating its 100th anniversary, to Revel, which debuted last year. 

Fittingly, Quinn’s joy is as evident in discussing up-and-coming artists as it is reflecting on the careers of literary titans past. It’s a joy undiminished since her own career in the arts began, some 53 years ago in 1972, working downtown at the Vera Institute of Justice. Though she had been an avid student of poetry since the age of five, she was considering a career as a lawyer when she received an invitation that would change her life.  

“A best friend of mine was married to an editor at Knopf and they had me to dinner,” said Quinn. After hours of conversation, her friend went to bed at 10:30, but her discussion with the editor continued. “We stayed up talking about Wallace Stevens until one in the morning and then he said, ‘I'm sending you home in a car, but I think you should be in publishing.’” Quinn received a call from Knopf the next day. “And that was it,” said Quinn. 

At Knopf, she began working for Nina Bourne, “the acknowledged genius of 20th century book advertising,” who would also become a dear friend. By 1975, she began serving as an editor for the publisher, covering a wide array of disciplines and establishing the Knopf Poetry Series in 1980, working with storied editor-in-chief Robert Gottlieb (CC ’52). 

The lineup took off, introducing a variety of breakthrough talents, “Sharon Olds (GSAS ’72) and Edward Hirsch and Amy Clampitt and Marie Ponsot ’41, wonderful names in poetry,” said Quinn. “Everyone was flocking to the firm. It was a new opportunity.

“Bob Gottlieb encouraged us to follow our passions,” recalled Quinn, “and that launched a list of books that within ten years had presented more than twenty new poets.”

Coupled with the support of Gottlieb and her colleagues at Knopf, it was an ideal beginning for the young editor. “I ended up having this golden welcome at this marvelous publishing house with these energetic people who were so much fun.” 

While it now seems hard to imagine that Quinn wouldn’t have found her way into the business one way or another, she’s the first to acknowledge her auspicious beginning, quoting writer E.B. White, “No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky,” and adding, “It’s a fact.”

If luck is just preparation meeting opportunity, Quinn is determined to have her students ready with the former when the latter comes along. Following their deep-dive into editing essentials, students are called to turn theory into practice. For the editor, she tells them, “The most important thing is receptivity, wanting to make a discovery.”  

Pulling from the research they’ve done outside of class, including trips to Poets House (a treasure trove of literary journals buried in Battery Park City) and the DeWitt Wallace Periodical Room at the New York Public Library, each student presents a selection of poems, stories, or essays from their reading, followed by a roundtable discussion of the work. 

Far from a laissez-faire selection of a few favorites, students are expected to prepare written opinions accompanying their choices. These small testaments to the merit of their procurement are shared with the entire class, along with the pieces themselves, ahead of the actual presentations. The format puts the work and methodology of the apprentice editors in full view, a platform that includes 17 discerning peers and one Alice Quinn.

It’s an all or nothing rigor that Quinn herself experienced, following her time at Knopf when she spent twenty-plus years serving as Poetry Editor for The New Yorker. “I was reading seven or eight hundred, or a thousand poems a week,” said Quinn.

She would then recommend a small fraction of the poems, maybe 17 or 21, to the deputy editor, along with a written opinion for each selection. “I would write a paragraph, just what I ask my students to do at school now,” said Quinn, “identifying its strengths, describing the surprise and the experience of the poem.”

While much of Quinn’s process was about selection and curation, occasionally her editorial role would extend to small notes, or suggestions. “It might be, is this really the perfect title? Or do you think the poem ends in the penultimate stanza? Because often poems do.” 

Always rigorous in her search for the exceptional, Quinn used her role at The New Yorker to develop a lineup of international talents. “I was able suddenly to publish Zbigniew Herbert, Czeslaw Milosz, Seamus Heaney, Wislawa Szymborska, Ron Padgett (CC ’64); the great voices from Poland and Israel and Romania and France,” said Quinn. “It was a complete thrill.

“And a lot of those poets, I had first been introduced to by Dan Halpern ’72 of Antaeus magazine, which was the literary journal of the ’70s and ’80s and ’90s in America,” continued Quinn, “and he founded our school at Columbia, the Writing [Program] of the School of the Arts. He did it with a handful of people. He just went up to Columbia and said, ‘This is New York City. I can get poets to come here and teach young poets.’” 

In 1990, Quinn would join that community, becoming an adjunct professor and cross-generation cornerstone of the School of the Arts, a relationship now in its 35th year. In keeping with her mission of championing emerging artists and bringing talented minds together (and directly overlapping her 19 years as Executive Director of the Poetry Society of America), Quinn brings every experience from her storied career into the classroom, often literally.

The guest lineup for this spring’s Editorial Vision course alone is an embarrassment of riches that includes Peter Campion (editor of Revel), Meghan O'Rourke (editor of The Yale Review), Barbara Epler (editor-in-chief of New Directions), Kristina Marie Darling (editor-in-chief of Tupelo Quarterly), Alan Felsenthal (founder of The Song Cave), and Victoria Wilson, an editor at Knopf for over half a century. 

“This is one of the most profound joys of Alice's courses; she will often give us the work of a particular poet and then invite that poet to come to class,” said student Jordyn Croge, citing specific examples.

“Meghan O'Rourke told us to not mistake editing for producing,” she recalled, “they are entirely different processes.” Croge also benefited from the ethos of Peter Campion, who “likes to arrange each issue like a bouquet of flowers—with intuition and balance, opposing any high degree of symmetry.”

Connecting her students with voices at the top of their fields is regular practice for Quinn, one she’s found beneficial for all parties involved. “I have this opportunity to share my friendships with all these marvelous writers,” said Quinn, “and they love coming to class because the students are very bright and they're disciplined and they're very serious about their writing.” 

Half a century in, Quinn’s ardor for her craft remains undiminished. It’s a fidelity reflected in the experiences of her students, as she encourages them to find the personal in the professional.

“Alice has taught us that arguing in favor of a piece of writing, be it poetry, fiction or nonfiction, should come from one’s passions and convictions,” said student Patricio Hernandez. 

“During her time at The New Yorker, she would look for pieces that made her feel something,” added Croge, “she taught me to wait to be struck by that sort of charged affection for a piece.” 

As a final project, students build their own literary journals, 110-130 pages curated from a semester in pursuit of voices new and old. The projects are a chance to exercise Quinn’s teachings, from finding the connection in disparate works, to framing the sublime with a new point of view, and champion the work they believe in. 

“One of my more personal takeaways from her instruction—always continue to hone your editorial praxis,” said Croge, “but more importantly, never let that steadfast enthusiasm within you grow tired.”

In the last two sessions of the semester, students will present their journals to the class, sharing their vision and purpose. It’s a first step in applying the lessons they’ve learned, and bringing the work to others; a platform where students can demonstrate both proficiency in craft, and abundance of ardor.

“The practice of editing,” said Hernandez, “is for me, a chance to keep the fire lit, to maintain the spirit of poetry going on for the next generations.”

The course is the latest way that Quinn has seamlessly tied together her love of poetry, people, and her profession. “I've been really lucky in that the four pillars of my professional life, Knopf, The New Yorker, The Poetry Society and Columbia, have had a very unifying quality, a very kind of interstitial interlacing,” said Quinn.

If the full-circle symmetry of Quinn’s career is enviable, it’s also self-fulfilling; the earned outcome of a life spent seeking others out, and bringing people in. Her passion for poetry is perhaps matched only by her commitment to the people behind it, the artists and editors and educators who dedicate themselves to the practice. 

“Professor Quinn devoted her time, her energy, and herself to us,” said student Evan Cowgill. It’s a common refrain among Quinn’s students, and a reminder that 35 years into her teaching practice, the editor of so many literary greats still believes in new voices.