Last year, Longreads published a list with behind-the-scenes stories about magazines. Last week, Anne Helen Petersen published an article about the state of Tiger Beat for BuzzFeed News. Inspired, I decided to create an addendum to Making the Magazine.
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Posted inAuthor Notes, Blog Post, Commentary, Discussions
In Praise of Public Pitching
I’ve always been fascinated by how narrative journalism gets commissioned, reported, and published–but the most perplexing part of the entire system is the continued power imbalance between writers and publishers. This imbalance persists in spite of the internet “democratizing” publishing. More digital publishers are embracing feature writing, but the process behind the scenes feels stuck in the past–a time-consuming marathon of […]
Posted inBooks, Fiction, Profiles & Interviews, Story
Taking the Slow Road: An Interview with Author Katherine Heiny
She published a short story in The New Yorker in 1992, then seemed to all but disappear. How author Katherine Heiny took her sweet time on the path toward publishing her new story collection.
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
A Reading List for My 25-Year-Old Self
This list is a birthday gift to me and, I hope, of use to you, too.
Posted inBooks, Fiction, Profiles & Interviews
Taking the Slow Road: An Interview with Author Katherine Heiny
She published a short story in The New Yorker in 1992, then seemed to all but disappear. How author Katherine Heiny took her sweet time on the path toward publishing her new story collection.
Posted inDiscussions, Nonfiction, Profiles & Interviews, Story
The Freelancers’ Roundtable
A conversation between freelancers Eva Holland, Josh Dean, Jason Fagone, and May Jeong about pitching stories, negotiating contracts, and breaking into a tough industry.
Posted inQuotes
Literary Fiction’s Open Secret
Author Christine Sneed, writing in the Billfold about the difficulty of earning a living as a writer of literary fiction—even with multiple book deals.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Joyce Maynard on Taking James Patterson’s Online Course in Writing Bestsellers
Lately, just about every time I turn to Facebook or Twitter, I’m greeted by an ad or sponsored content about the online writing course bestselling thriller author James Patterson offers on the MasterClass site (where Dustin Hoffman, Annie Liebovitz, Usher, Serena Williams and others serve up the tricks to their trades, too). “Set out to […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
‘Two-Thirds of Publishing Is About Failure’
My boss when I worked in London—someone who’d published Booker Prize winners, remember—used to say that two-thirds of publishing is about failure. I agree with that: it’s the nature of the business. And yet publishing is an industry that keeps attracting to it, in various ways, people who want it to be two-thirds about success. […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Art of Agenting
A conversation with literary agent Chris Parris-Lamb about the state of the publishing industry and the problem with NaNoWriMo: “I frankly think that initiatives like National Novel Writing Month are insulting to real writers. We don’t have a National Heart Surgery Month, do we?”
