Placing this in context with Lavie’s activism for World SF, I would hazard that the reason he picked both Sara and me out of the (numerous) new writers that Asimov’s publishes or is going to publish is that neither of us has English as a first language and/or that neither of us lives in an Anglophone country. In spite of the phrasing, it read to me more like a comment on diversity than on new writers per se (at least, it made sense to me that way).

I confess that I don’t pay enough attention to Asimov’s bios to know which of the writers on your list would meet those criteria, so I don’t know how much of that is true.

I hadn’t read it that way, but in the list above I know that in addition to Heather, Ian McHugh, E. Salih, Lesli Robyn, Ian Creasey, and Matthew Johnson do not live in the US. Except for Heather, I don’t believe that any of them are American.

I read him as picking out Genge and de Bodard specifically because they aren’t American and so it can be harder for them to access American markets. (Some of the authors you list may be international, too? I know Heather is in the UK, although she’s an American.)

I wouldn’t mind seeing all of the above magazines drop their nonfiction features in favor of more fiction, but the one I feel that way most strongly about is Asimov’s; the only nonfiction there I really enjoy is Norman Spinrad’s book reviews (he reviews about a third of the time, Paul Di Fillipo and Peter Heck more often) and about half of Robert Silverberg’s essays. Most of F&SF’s book reviews and science columns are good, but not as good as the fiction; similarly the small press zines have fun nonfiction, but not as good IMO as their fiction.