Congratulations to Courtney L. Howell for winning December's trivia contest! (Correct answers are below.) Courtney has chosen the Fall 2010 issue of The Paris Review as her prize.

This novelist made her publishing debut in The Paris Review...while she was still in college.

a) Joyce Carol Oates

b) Meg Wolitzer

c) Ann Patchett

In 1976, this writer told The Paris Review:

I don’t work with plots. I work with intuition, apprehension, dreams, concepts. Characters and events come simultaneously to me. Plot implies narrative and a lot of crap. It is a calculated attempt to hold the reader’s interest at the sacrifice of moral conviction. Of course, one doesn’t want to be boring . . . one needs an element of suspense. But a good narrative is a rudimentary structure, rather like a kidney.

a) Norman Mailer

b) John Cheever

c) Flannery O'Connor

This French writer told The Paris Review:

You might get the impression that I have a mild contempt for storytelling, which is only somewhat true...At first, I don’t obey, I don’t plot, but then from time to time, I say to myself, Come on, there’s got to be a story. I control myself. But I will never give up a beautiful fragment merely because it doesn’t fit in the story.

a) Michel Houellebecq

b) Marguerite Duras

c) Raymond Queneau

Correct answers: 1,A; 2, B; 3,A.

When she's not proving her mighty lit mag savvy, Courtney is an editor at an independent e-book publishing house in Austin, TX. She's in a band called Villette. And she makes a mean chicken pot pie. She also is addicted to twitter. Say hi and fawn over literary mags with her @CourtLeighLove.