What was the most important criteria for you in choosing an essay for the Best American Essay collection? Is that different from the criteria you use for selecting essays for The American Scholar?

For both Best American Essays and The American Scholar I choose essays with strong, skilled voices; in both cases, content is less important than style. But the two publications do differ. When I accept a piece for the Scholar, I don't have to publish it right away. I can wait until an issue comes along in which it will contribute well to the mix. For instance, I wouldn't publish an issue of the Scholar that consisted only of personal essays, or one that consisted only of critical essays. I wouldn't publish an issue in which every author was over seventy, or one in which every author was under thirty. And I never have to. In other words, I have complete freedom simply to accept anything I and my colleagues really love, because I know that during the next year or so, every good essay will find a home in the right issue, surrounded by a pleasantly diverse bunch of other essays. With Best American Essays, on the other hand, I was assembling a single volume for one year only, so although in theory the only criterion was merit, I did need to think about the volume's mix; if the authors or their essays had been all alike, the reading experience would have been dull. A second difference is that I have the luxury of editing pieces I accept for the Scholar, so I have more freedom to take essays that are full of life and originality but need a little grooming. I can therefore take more risks--for instance, on young, unknown writers with great potential that may not yet be entirely realized. If Elisabeth Schuman had submitted "The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating" to the Scholar, I would have accepted it in an instant.

When choosing essays for publication in The American Scholar, do you look for a balance of views amongst the essays?

To some extent. Most of our essays don't have "views"--they're not political or polemical. If I ran an essay that was obviously political, and it happened to be leftwing, I might publish it in the same issue as a good conservative essay if I had one on hand. But we don't go out of our way to be balanced. In our Autumn issue we published an essay that was highly critical of Florida and its residents, and I felt no obligation to seek a pro-Florida essay in order to be "fair." In such cases, our readers often even the score by writing disputatious letters to the editor, and we run as many as we can.

Which is more important -- an essay which eloquently describes a mundane subject, or a not-quite-as-artful essay about an unusual topic?

"Important" isn't an adjective I like applying to essays, though I think it's a useful one for reportage. Your second choice sounds more "important," but I suspect the first would likely be better. I'd certainly be more likely to publish it.

Whom do you read? What books are you reading right now? What are your favorite books? Who are your favorite writers?

I wish I had time to read as much as I used to before I became editor of the Scholar seven years ago. Most of my reading time is spent with unsolicited manuscripts. During the last year, among newly published books, my favorites were Tracy Kidder's Mountains Beyond Mountains and Adrian Nicole LeBlanc's Random Family, both marvelous examples of literary journalism. I couldn't name my favorite books unless you allotted several hundred pages for my response, and for similar reasons I think I'd better restrict my favorite writers to just a couple of genres, the ones I practice myself. They include A. J. Liebling and John McPhee (reportage) and Charles Lamb, Virginia Woolf, George Orwell, and E. B. White (essays).

I am guessing that your position as editor of American Scholar precluded you from being able to do the kind of immersion project which resulted in The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. Do you miss that type of writing assignment?

Yes, you're right--I don't do any reportage right now. Editing the Scholar is a more-than-fulltime job. I'd miss the reportage if I knew I'd never do it again, but because I'm sure I will do it again, I'm very happy to be spending this phase of my life as an editor. My husband, George Howe Colt, is also a writer, and we can't afford to work on books at the same time, so we trade off, with one of us holding a job that has health insurance and so on. But I love my work at the Scholar so passionately that even though it's theoretically my turn to write another book, I've chosen to keep on editing for a while more. Also, I have the great luxury of working at home now; it will be easier to return to reportage--which usually requires travel--when my children are a little older. In general, I think it's wrong to view editing as a lower calling than writing. It involves more creativity than you might imagine, and if, like me, you have the privilege of working with writers you've admired most of your life, it's a profoundly exciting activity. I feel sure that when I finally do stop, I'll miss it tremendously--as one might miss an old lover, or perhaps a phantom limb.