Last, meet Flyway’s creative director/ web czaress, Lindsay D’Andrea. You can find her updating the blog, tweeting, managing our Facebook page, and helping layout issue design. Consider her a behind-the-scenes editor.

Lindsay, with her most creative hair

What book can you not stop talking to people about?
Ever since we circulated Anthony Doerr’s books around before last year’s Wildness Symposium, it’s been his collection of short stories, The Shell Collector. I just can’t get over how textured, heart-rending, complex, and epic Doerr stories are, and I recommend them to everyone. If you haven’t read it yet, that needs to be the first thing on your list. Starting now.

What book compels your writing?
I’ve read a lot of books on craft — too many, I think. Obviously The Art of Fiction is a staple. More than reading, though, I learn most from my professors and peers and the invaluable advice they give. Actually, from a different perspective, I feel most compelled to write by reading poetry, and my go-to (for now) has been  Stephen Dunn.

What (other than Flyway) literary magazines do you read?
I jump all over the place, sampling from a bunch of different online and print journals. I really like Hayden’s Ferry, Gulf Coast, Ecotone (hurray for environmentally-minded journals!), Necessary Fiction, the Rumpus, Orion, The Southern Review, AQR — plus a lot more. I also love the visual art featured on Escape into Life and Society 6.

What writers do you seek out in literary magazines?
Oh, gosh. I usually look for writers that have been on my “must-read-more” list like Karen Russell, Lauren Groff and Meghan Mayhew Bergman, but usually I read journals for the unknowns (like myself). I will just pick stories and poems at random and read them, with hope that someone out there is doing the same for me. I usually then try to follow those emerging writers on Twitter. Our technological internet-driven age means that reading shouldn’t be passive anymore…our capacity for communication is too great to ignore.

What advice do you have for potential-contributors of Flyway?
Send us your best! A lot of times I feel like we get stories that have not been polished or edited properly or extensively. We have pretty high standards, here, and we always want the best you can give. For visual art, I look for interesting composition (in photographs) or complex relationships between visual elements. Obviously, we “like” plants and rocks and fields and pastorals, but that’s not what we’re really about…surprise us with your new ideas about the environment…it’s changing at a rate that can no longer sustain a boxed-in definition.