This is worth keeping in mind, especially for someone who is so sensitive about perceived slights from others.

Your point about expanding the focus…again, resources, time, money, etc. It’s simply not possible. Nor is it necessarily desirable in terms of creating a diverse yet focused book. Now, casting as wide a net as possible in terms of North American publications, as you suggest, is of course part of our brief. And since the guest editor changes every year, the tastes and focus will change every year–this is the strength of having revolving editors. That said, this discussion will of course inform decisions made moving forward.

Ron–that’s a good point, and I admit I could’ve been less sarcastic in making my point. The problem is: our brief is clear, and Kincaid could have given the information Medievalist wanted in one or two sentences simply by quoting from our mission statement. Instead, he deliberately chooses to pretend to not know what our brief is. Or, he’s not a good enough reviewer to do his research. This kind of meandering is sloppy, and it’s not a review of the anthology–it’s a backhanded and dishonest critique of editorial intent. Had he spent those words actually engaging the stories and providing more analysis, and then *hated every story in the anthology*, I would not have included that comment in my post. He has every right to review the stories and find them wanting. He doesn’t have the right to pretend he doesn’t know our objectives when they are clearly stated. Or, even if he does, I think I have the right to point this out, whether communicated well or poorly. Does that make sense?

But Kinkaid’s points as I understood them, that not everyone defines ‘American’ by US, and that fantasy draws on international literary traditions, seem to me to be valid. As we operate more and more on an international level, I don’t know that it’s a bad thing to remind international readers, for whom “American” may not be limited to the US, that what they are getting is just that. Nor is it a bad thing to remind people that we can’t just assume the two are the same. Part of reviewing is telling the prospective readers what is in a book — and what isn’t. So it was useful to me to know that the stories came from a broader selection of original publications than is the norm. It was also useful to know that the collection tended more towards the fantastic than to straight fantasy. I dunno — it just seemed to me that your reaction was unnecessarily defensive. When there are plenty of good reasons for putting together the book you did — including, “This is the book we wanted,” it’s confusing to read a comment that suggests that Mexicans (for example) aren’t really Americans because they don’t write in English.

But the overriding brief is needing to have focus for any anthology, and with the thousands of US/Canadian lit mags, it would be as stated impossible to cover Latin America. My inability to read in Spanish is irrelevant. The expense of translation is. Does begin to get some ideas started in my brain, though. I’d hoped to do a translated fiction series going through Ministry of Whimsy, but the economy is so bad even trad projects have trouble gaining traction. Anyway, BAF switches editors every year.