Interviews With The Fantastic
InterGalactic Interview With Shawna McCarthy
by Darrell Schweitzer
Shawna McCarthy is a former assistant editor and later full editor of Isaac Asimov's Science
Fiction Magazine. She also edited books for Bantam-Spectra, and edited the magazine Realms of
Fantasy from its beginning in 1994 to its recent demise. She has been nominated for the Hugo
for Best Professional Editor three times and won it once. She is active as a literary agent.
This interview is from a guest presentation at the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society, January
27, 2012. It makes more sense if you realize that the interviewer and Shawna both worked for
George Scithers when he was editor of Isaac Asimov's SF Magazine in the late 1970s and early
'80s, although Shawna was at the New York office and I was in Philadelphia and we didn't
know each other at the time.
