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White Fungus--what a great name!
The university literary journal I interned with had pre-solicited all of its stories, except for one slot left open for slush-extraction, and that one went on to be short-listed in Best American Short Stories.
To be sure, the best stories are the ones published. It's hard to compete with the Rick Basses and Lee Abbotts and Richard Fords of the world. They're at the top because they belong there, and if I had a lit mag to run, I'd be courting them, too, for one of their stories.
Sorry to have sounded so jaded, gettingby. Gee, I thought I'd gotten over that...
Even genre magazines publish mostly established writers, often solicit those stories, and many issues don't even have a new writer on board. The simple fact is that established writers are also almost always the best writers, that's how they became established writers, and in order to find a slot in any good magazine, you have to write better than one of those established writers.
This is why I find it sad that many writers think they have to sell short stories before they can sell a novel. Ah, if only it were that easy.