Interview w/ Glen Phillips

By Carol Smallwood

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Glen Phillips

Glen Phillips is the publisher of Front Porch Review, a quarterly online literary magazine based in IL.

Please describe your website and your duties as editor/writer.

Front Porch Review is an online literary journal whose intended audience is the older members of our population and whose contributors have, in the most part come late to the creativity game. I act as editor and publisher, improving the approved submissions when necessary (the misuse of basic punctuation is appalling) and then alerting its avid readers to its availability on a quarterly basis.

Tell us about your career.

I toiled in the vineyards of educational and IT publishing as editor, writer, product designer, subject matter expert, business manager, and other menial roles not worth mentioning. After forty years of such effort, I decided that the best I could do for the common good was to build an electronic front porch.

Which recognitions/achievements have encouraged you the most?

The occasional email remarking about the beauty or truthfulness of a piece is all the applause I need.

Which writers have influenced you the most?

William Trevor, Joyce Carol Oates, Dostoyevsky, Raymond Carver

How has the Internet benefited you?

Provided a national audience as well as contributors

What classes have helped you the most?

I lead a short story discussion class at Northwestern. The attendees represent a small sample of Front Porch Review’s audience; thus, their perspectives contribute to my selection criteria

What advice would you give others?

Nothing beats patience and perseveration. Nothing.

What is your favorite quotation?

“You’ll never plow a field by turning it over in your mind”
—Irish proverb

Carol Smallwood