They ought to be called Darek, or maybe Errel.

They are Darrell H. Y. Lum and Eric Chock, co-editors of Bamboo Ridge literary magazine. And to many, they might as well be one person: They met at Ma'ema'e Elementary and shared Kawananakoa, McKinley High School, the University of Hawai'i and the cultural revolution of the '60s and '70s. Both are 57 and, like all baby boomers, sound a little surprised and embarrassed about it. And both, of course, are writers.

But they do have different lives. Chock is an instructor at UH-West O'ahu, married with no children; Lum is a retired student counselor with two kids. Lum lives in Hawai'i Kai and Chock in Mililani Mauka.

Still, in many people's minds, they're saimin and char siu.

The two still share the task of selecting the work that will appear in the quarterly journal. It's a high-tech operation that involves handing off sacks of manuscripts, piling them into "yes," "no" and "maybe" stacks, and debating the article's merits with Chock making long, reasoned arguments and Lum saying "Well, I just liked it. I don't know why."

Although they share work and creative energy with many others, there was no question that they would be the two in the hot seats when the idea of a roast was proposed as a fundraiser for Bamboo Ridge's anniversary kickoff.

This being the 4-1-1-only-please age, we asked them to sum up 30 years in three questions, one for each decade.

What's been the best thing in the past 30 years?

What was the worst?

And what's your hope for the future?

Here's what they said:

LUM —

Best: "Working on a new issue. ... There's always something surprising and you go 'Oooooh.' You're almost jealous: 'I wish I'd written that,' something that just blows you away. ... Otherwise, why would we do it? There's got to be something that keeps you going."

Worst: "About 15 years ago, Eric said he was really tired and he wanted to quit: 'Why don't you find another editor?' That, for me, was the worst. And yet he kept doing it."

Hope: "The renshi poetry project on the Web site (four poets trade off, each one writing a piece with the next having to begin their piece from the last line of the one before, with a linked quartet completed each month). I've just been following along as a spectator, and it's really fun. It emphasizes two important ideas: It's collaborative, and yet the voices are distinct. And it's inclusive. The second phase, the Bamboo Shoots (in which registered participants, too, write linked poems), is not quite set up yet, but the hope is that people will take the idea and run with it."

CHOCK —

Best: "So what is this, a Charles Dickens novel? The best is when we started getting picked up by college classes on the Mainland in the '80s. We started going to the Mainland for conferences and getting the kind of validation that helps for those local people who still believe that we must not be too good 'cause it's local stuff, yeah? When people we published started getting famous, it felt so good. Hawai'i's literature is alive in the world, and we helped to get it there."

Worst: "There have been lots of depressing moments. ... The late-night calls from East Coast bookstores who didn't think it was 3 in the morning for us. And then there was a phase when we got a lot of calls from disgruntled writers who we had not published and who wanted to explain to me in explicit terms how we were really missing out, or how we really were unfit for our jobs as editors. The more popular we got, the more negative feedback we got, in some ways."

Hope: "I just want more of the same. ... If we kept putting out literature and the schools using it in their classes and writers getting invited to conferences and bookstores ordering. To discover that there's another great voice among us that just hits home when you read it. That would be nice for a few more years."

Reach Wanda A. Adams at wadams@honoluluadvertiser.com.