Digital Housekeeping: An Interview with Web Editor Janelle Tan

Photo by Sean Lee

To give readers a look into the NYU Creative Writing MFA Program and the individuals who make it so unique, Washington Square Review is hosting a series of micro-interviews with its staff.

First up is our Web Editor, Janelle Tan.

Janelle is a Pushcart Prize- and Best of the Net-nominated poet living in Brooklyn. Born and raised in Singapore, she is an MFA candidate in poetry and teaches creative writing at New York University. Her work appears or is forthcoming in The Southampton Review, Winter Tangerine, Nat. Brut, The Boiler, and elsewhere. She is Web Editor at Washington Square Review and reads for Perugia Press.

‍WSR: Let’s start with the basics. How long have you been at NYU?

JT: This is my last semester, so I’ve been here just about two years. 

WSR: And how long have you been the Web Editor at Washington Square?

JT: I was Assistant Web Editor my first year, and then this year I became Web Editor. So I’ve been on the Web team the whole time I’ve been at NYU. 

WSR: What does that entail?

JT: So last year, when I was Assistant Web Editor, the Web team also did social media. We were also responsible, then, for the blog calendar; we generated content for the blog. This year, we set up a separate social media team that handles all the social media. We switched from a model where the Web team generated content to one where we get content from the rest of Washington Square’s staff and upload it to our site. 

Aside from that, we designed the website at the beginning of the year, we maintain the website, and upload the new issues. All of Issue 45 will be online because of the pandemic; that is another big change. 

WSR: Did you have any experience doing coding or web design before this?

JT: When I was in undergrad, I was an intern at the poetry center at my college. And I did their website, I did their web for them. Mostly, I taught myself when I was there. When I applied to the job I have, I already had experience maintaining a website, building a website, and I also built my own personal website. But building a website for yourself, like on your days off, is very different than building one for a journal that already has an established literary presence. Because you’re not the one making all the editorial choices. A lot of things are done by both Lauren, the other Assistant Web Editor, and me. 

WSR: Are you excited about the issue being put online?

JT: I think so! Before, every content team would select a few pieces to be put online. But I’m excited about this whole issue being put online—we’ve had a few requests from people who have books coming out that we put their poems and stories up on our website, because that’s where agents look, you know. Kiki Petrosino’s poem in Issue 41 that won a Pushcart Prize wasn’t originally online, so we published it on the site after it won. A writer from a past issue was trying to sell a novel and asked us, “Can you put it online? I’m getting a lot of agent attention.” I don’t want to say that print is going out of fashion, but it’s getting more important to people that their work is online. 

WSR: What’s your relationship to showing your own work online, to making your own website?

JT: It’s always been important to me to have a website, to be able to control what information people get about me. I’m perhaps a bit neurotic about this. But I recently have been Googling myself, and trying to clear old websites that don’t match where I am right now. I have to digitally clear the cobwebs. So I do things like trying to make sure that my website is the first search on Google when you search my name. I like to put all the work I’ve published in one place. And I get solicited through my website a bunch.

WSR: Oh, cool!

JT: Yeah! I had a poem come out in Bodega, and I linked to my website, and I think the editor for Wildness saw it, and solicited a piece from me through my website. So I think it’s helpful when all your work is in one place. People know who you are, and there’s a contact form.

WSR: That’s really interesting to me, because I know that’s something I was really concerned about coming to NYU—I didn’t have any online presence. It’s been something I’ve been trying to build up as I’ve gone along my time here, and it’s something I’ve learned a lot about from other people as well.

JT: Right. Like I have this lyric essay coming out in the Southampton Review in April, but the Southampton Review, like Washington Square, is a print publication that selects certain pieces to go online. But because this is my first nonfiction publication, it was very important to me that it appeared online. So I actually requested that they publish it online, too. Because it was important to me—to prove that I can write nonfiction—to have a nonfiction piece online.

WSR: I totally agree. My last question is, is there anything you wish you had been told coming in as a prospective student to NYU?

JT: Hm—this is very interesting. I think, coming into the program, I had this idea that everyone was leaps and bounds ahead of me. I had this idea that everybody had published extensively, and there were people who had whole books out already, and prestigious publications. I had this idea that I was going to be far behind. And sometimes I still feel that way; I feel like NYU is a lot more of a career-oriented MFA than other programs. I feel like everyone in the program at least has an awareness of what it means to make poetry a career. Or everyone is at least taking steps towards that. I think something that I wish I had known is that I didn’t need to be so worried about publications. That a lot of the people I know who are writing really, really incredible work wait to publish. Everybody works at their own pace. Some people are sending out stuff regularly during the semester, some people after every semester—but some people also wait until the very end, and then slowly submit things that they love. And, in workshop, I love everyone’s work so much that it almost doesn’t matter to me. I wish before coming in I hadn’t been so intimidated by everyone’s publishing track record, and feeling like I was going to be behind.