Amy Grace Loyd was hired to be the literary editor of Playboy magazine – ” Saul Bellow, Nabokov, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Ursula Le Guin, Joyce Carol Oates – all were repeat contributors to Playboy” (no I didn’t know that either!). She writes about her experience in this neatly written article.
Hefner may be an anachronism to many, but he’s also an iconoclast of a distinctly American variety. My time there made me a better editor, probably a better and certainly a more resilient person; and even when I knew I had no place there anymore, as the editorial direction changed and the New York offices and then, only a few years later, the Chicago offices closed, I didn’t regret a day of it. I still don’t. I was able to do things there as an editor that I’ll never be able to do anywhere else.