The Life and Times of Black Clock Magazine

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The legendary Black Clock has been retired. At Lit Hub, novelist Bruce Bauman, author most recently of Broken Sleep, recounts the magazine’s history in a conversation with Jeff VanderMeer:

From the very beginning when Jon Wagner had hired Steve to start the magazine, it was clear the vison, the content—all final decisions would be Steve’s. I was always cool with that. In fact, I think that’s the only way it could work. Steve edited every single piece in every issue of the magazine. As time went on, he let me do first edits on a number of pieces. Especially the younger or newer writers I brought in and the unsolicited pieces. We had a process where our interns would read the unsolicited pieces: every piece was read by at least two interns. Then I would read them. Then Steve would say yea or nay and edit it if were yes.


David lives in central Ohio and works for a sports newspaper. He is a regular contributor to Nervous Breakdown and Andrei Codrescu's Exquisite Corpse. More from this author →