The New Yorker has created a list of 20 writers under 40 worth watching. You probably hate it already, without even knowing who's on it. But how can you complain about it, without looking jealous and bitter?

The New Yorker's fiction editor Deborah Treisman claims on the Readerville message board that she does, in fact, pick submissions from the slush pile, (although she seems suspiciously surprised to find a published writer who got in that way.) She also saysfor the recordthat jokes about her nose don't bother her, that she's not going to publish only young Vietnamese women, and that she's not worried about people saying she has bad taste in fiction.
What is it about the New Yorker? [Readerville via Publisher's Lunch]
A bookworm as a child, now the talk of the town [NYT]