{"id":39192,"date":"2026-07-17T09:19:39","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T13:19:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/?p=39192"},"modified":"2026-07-17T09:19:39","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T13:19:39","slug":"arley-sorg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/2026\/07\/17\/arley-sorg\/","title":{"rendered":"Bite into General Tso\u2019s Bok Choy with Arley Sorg on Episode 287 of Eating the Fantastic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Out in the real world, I find myself straddled between July’s Readercon and August’s Worldcon, but on Eating the Fantastic’s timeline, June’s StokerCon is just about to begin. My first guest of four from that Pittsburgh con is Arley Sorg<\/a>. Arley\u2019s an associate literary agent at kt literary, and long-time listeners will have previously heard me chat with him briefly during my 2017 Nebula Awards weekend<\/a> lightning-round donut episode.<\/p>\n

Arley’s a 2022 Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award recipient, a 2021 and 2022 World Fantasy Award finalist, as well as a 2022 Locus Award finalist for his work as co-Editor-in-Chief at\u00a0Fantasy Magazine<\/em>.\u00a0He was\u00a0a 2022\u00a0Ignyte Award\u00a0finalist in two categories: for his work as a critic, and for his essay \u201cWhat You Might Have Missed\u201d in\u00a0Uncanny Magazine.<\/p>\n

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He’s a senior editor at\u00a0Locus<\/em>, a reviewer for\u00a0Lightspeed<\/em>, a columnist for\u00a0The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction<\/em>, and an interviewer for\u00a0Clarkesworld<\/em>. He was a guest critiquer for the 2023 Odyssey Writing Workshop and the week five instructor for the 2023 Clarion West Workshop. Plus he’s out there across social media promoting the philosophy writers should “never give up, never surrender” as much as I have.<\/p>\n

We discussed the difficulty in getting the help you need as a beginning writer when you don’t know what you don’t know, the serendipity that got him a job at Locus<\/em>, how to inhabit the community that is while envisioning the community that could be, why an agent might prefer in-person pitches over email, the importance of doing things without an agenda, the way we learned to deal with both rejecting and being rejected, how to make sense of the myths and rumors of science fiction publishing, why he feels comfortable in his role as an agent, plus much more.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how you can join us at EYV restaurant<\/a> — <\/p>\n

1) Subscribe at Apple Podcasts<\/a> — or wherever<\/a> you choose to consume your podcasts — where I hope you’ll be tempted to sample a few of the 286 previous episodes.<\/p>\n

2) Listen via the RSS feed of http:\/\/eatingthefantastic.libsyn.com\/rss<\/a> on the device of your choice.<\/p>\n

3) Or simply use the embed below.<\/p>\n