A Conversation with Kate Jayroe and Andy Sia

Associate Editor Kate Jayroe: As Andy and I conclude our graduate assistantships here at CR, we had the opportunity to ask one another some questions and reflect on our experiences. We spoke about editorial philosophies, the work we accomplished together, and words of wisdom for the next cohort. We enjoyed our conversation.

We hope you enjoy reading it!

KJ: Hi, Andy! Congratulations on your book, Sleuth, published with Bench Editions (a local Cincinnati press). Did your work at CR influence how you went about drafting, arranging, or seeking a publisher? Did you find yourself viewing your own work differently after immersing yourself in this editorial role?  

AS: Thank you, Kate! Before CR, I was a reader then a poetry editor at Yalobusha Review, a literary journal focused on experimental writing. I learned a lot working with Yalobusha Review and honed my ear for subversive work that proposes forms of expression outside the mainstream. I love this way that literary journals can wend toward capacious work and language—an ethos that bear out in many smaller publications and presses—and I try to bring in this general approach to CR. Bench is a fairly new press; when I submitted to them, they had released just one book: Alyssa Perry’s Oily Doily, her debut poetry collection. I was—am—a fan of Alyssa’s work, having first encountered her poetry, in fact, through Yalobusha Review. The decision to submit to Bench was an easy one, and I’m grateful for their faith in the manuscript. 

The relationship between my writing and my editorial work or reading is a symbiotic albeit amorphous one. To begin, it’s a privilege to read work others have submitted and entrusted to our care. I say this as a writer myself: Sending out work is a vulnerable process! So, I really do strive to read everything with care. But more specifically, seeing so many different styles, experiments, loci in slush makes me bolder as a writer, more expansive. It’s also always helpful, I think, getting a pulse on the broader writing landscape through slush. 

What about you? Hard to believe, but we’ve both been with CR for two years! How has your editorial philosophy developed since starting two years ago? What sort of work do you seek? Do you see any patterns or synchronicities at play? 

KJ: I started off with CR feeling like I was wearing a hat, temporarily becoming some uniformed person representing another thing entirely. I was absorbing what came before me at the journal, thinking about ways to align, depart, and move around a known and established body of work. I think that was a helpful way to begin, but it had a clear expiration date. Toward the end of my first year and into my second year, I felt much more like myself. I don’t know that it ultimately changed the sort of work I was interested in advocating for and publishing, but I had my own intuitions and language regarding editorial work, arriving naturally in their appropriate form. I am the editor. I no longer needed to become.  

When we cycle through miCRo picks and I see us picking up certain threads and pulling those deeper into focus, it feels like a welcome symptom of some functional collaborative editorial philosophies at play. I think about botanical frisson, nuclear energy, and sheep as clear thematic nodes that arose in many of our miCRos.  

It was never about picking similar work or artists, but about a sort of incidental, associative institutional footprint that we’ve made and preserved in the CR pathways. It’s the sort of phenomenon I see largely in the rearview, which has been food for thought about how much of the editorial role is comprised of the iceberg under the water’s surface.  

There’s clear editorial work above the surface, like copy editing, correspondence, and arranging things for the site. I don’t know if we give as much credit to the intuitive aspects of editing, a huge realm that’s a bit harder to verbalize and tease out in any sort of clear or obvious professional language.  

Can you speak a bit about your experience planning and co-hosting our 2026 AWP offsite event, a reading celebrating miCRo that featured contributors from various years? I’m interested in the movement between spaces—from the virtual page to the Baltimore taproom. What’s it like having read someone’s work and then interacted with them in person? What’s it like hearing the written word from the author live? 

AS: It’s a joy to host the reading with you! I’ve organized and co-organized events in the past, and it’s always more fun working with others, especially with friends. Plus, I think we work well together; I appreciate the times when you would pick up on the slack, and feel like we were able to mesh our work styles and keep things going. So many others helped with the reading—the whole thing seemed crowdsourced—likely the case with any event. The folks at Max’s Taphouse, of course, were so kind to open their doors to us. And well before then, Lisa and Bess had emphasized we should look for a place with preexisting mic setup; that helped narrow our search for a place tremendously.   

Put simply, what a pleasure it is to meet our miCRo contributors and listen to them read. These are writers we deeply admire, and it’s so energizing meeting writers in person, having spent time with them and their work on the page. I think of the literary journal as a gathering space; I’m glad we were able, with the help of others and our readers, to put together this reading and continue to bring together people beyond the (web)page. I have to be honest with you: I was a little nervous during the day of the reading! But I was able to relax once the reading began—especially because we were co-hosting and I knew we had each other’s back—and be fully present to the reading, which ran the gamut from meditative to funny to heartbreaking. I loved seeing the different styles of reading, ways in which each reader animated their work. A wonderful night! 

What advice do you have for continuing and incoming student editors? What do you think you’ll be taking with you from CR into your professional future? 

KJ: Host in-person events with contributors when possible! The dynamism of sharing space with humans, that natural, ephemeral part of the writing world, feels rarer today than it did even four, five years ago. Being an editor somewhere as active and established in the literary community as The Cincinnati Review opens this beautiful portal of mutual professional stewardship. Folks want to get involved! Puts wind in the ole sails.  

I’ll be taking the sense of generous, genuine curiosity that I think rests in the heart of The Cincinnati Review. There’s an openness to whimsy and an insistence on vulnerability that really makes this journal as compelling and deep as it is. Respect for process and a true love of collaboration are things I’ll carry forward from here too.