In general what are the important conversations you have with an author before you even acquire their book?
I want to see if our energies match, but also I just want to hear from them a little bit about what inspires them, what they’re excited about, what they love about literature. And I generally gush a lot about the writer’s work, because if I’m speaking with a writer, I’m in love. I don’t do calls if I’m not really poised to offer. I’ll talk about the process they will go through with me as an editor. And if they want it I’ll give them some editorial feedback. I might not get into the weeds editorially on the first call, but if there is a big pause for me [in the proposal], I will bring it up in that initial call. Because I don’t want a writer to think they’re getting something from me, and then I turn around and say, “Actually, change the title. Cut this character. Please can you write another hundred years of history into your nonfiction book?” That to me just feels incredibly mean and painful, which I try not to be. So afterward I talk them through what they can expect from me, which is a line edit on paper most of the time.
Katie Raissian of Scribner. (Credit: Andres Hernandez, photo assistant Kuan Hsieh)
That’s old-school.
I’m very old-school. When I first worked at New Directions, I would sneak into Barbara Epler’s office and look at her manuscripts and her paper edits. And my old boss at Grove, Elisabeth Schmitz, also edited on paper, and that’s how I learned, essentially. I will put something into Track Changes if the author prefers, but they’ll also get it on paper.
And it’s a collaboration. To me an edit is a conversation. I always explain to a writer that I’m going to be one of their closest readers and one of their most brutally honest readers. And I’ll probably also ask the stupidest questions and most obvious questions that any reader might ask, because if something stops me or trips me up even slightly, it probably will trip up another reader, and I just want the question to be answered. Whether [we ultimately] leave it as it is or make this teeny-tiny change, it’s a partnership with the writer. It’s not like I’m going to come in and tell you that “you have to make your work this way.” It’s a back-and-forth.
I have the same editorial philosophy in that I think of it as a partnership, especially if you’re thinking about the career of an author. I’m not thinking about just this one book. We are thinking about what that next one looks like. And even if it’s something completely different, it’s still in the lineage of what they’re writing. So what does that kind of pathway look like? Building that relationship now and building that trust is so important.
Exactly. I try to put myself in the writer’s shoes as much as I can because I am not a writer. I don’t have the talent for it. You’re working on something for five years or ten years, it’s lived in your brain, it’s lived with you, and then someone comes along and in the space of a month basically redlines it and says, “Change this, please. What do you think of this? What does this mean? Why this?” So I always try to be very sensitive to the fact that the writer has put so much into this, and comparatively, even though I’m putting a ton of concentrated energy into the work, I have not put close to as much as they probably have.
I do want them to know there’s a real level of respect that I have for their craft, and I am going to be on their side. And if anything is still stuck in my brain, I will point it out. I want them to be their very best, and I want them to have the best shot out there.
What attracts you in a query e-mail to make you open that Word doc? Does the bio matter? Is it the pitch?
More often than not, if I know the agent knows what I do and what I like, I’m inclined to open it quickly. But I do open all of my submissions as they come in, and I’ll take a quick peek. I don’t read the cover letter. I’ll take a look at the manuscript first and start reading and see if I like the language, see how I’m responding to it. And then I’ll go back and look at the cover letter and orient myself a bit more with the author and things like that. I think the proof is always in the writing. A cover letter can say a lot of great things. So can a bio, but that doesn’t matter if I open it and I’m not really connecting with it.
And prestige doesn’t matter to me either. I’ve published work by writers who have maybe been featured in one publication and by writers who’ve had stories in major outlets. It really doesn’t matter to me. I’m looking for something that resonates deeply with me.
Writers are always worried about writing to the “market.” Does the market dictate what you acquire?
No, the market does not dictate what I acquire, and maybe that’s foolish on my part, but I don’t publish to trends, and I don’t publish to market demands. I think every reader deserves to access every kind of book. And I’m not going to bash romantasy or anything like that for its popularity. It’s not my area of publishing. I’m not versed in it. I don’t know how to do it. What I know how to do is literary. So for me I’m probably looking for the opposite. I’m looking for something that’s evergreen and that will remain. And if there is some sort of tie-in to what’s happening in the world, it’s because they’re in the world and they’re fighting for their worlds or their imagined worlds.
I won’t shy away from something that speaks to politics or contemporary issues, [but] that’s not top of mind when I’m reading a submission and when I’m thinking about how to position a writer. I’m thinking about their work, how it fits into what I know how to do, how it fits into the publishing home that knows how to [publish this kind of work].
I mean, I say that sometimes [what I publish] does fit into what has now become a trend, like Asian comfort fiction or comfort literature. I am going to publish this book in the fall, Lost Souls Meet Under a Full Moon by Mizuki Tsujimura, which is going to be a paperback original. She’s an incredible writer and a multimillion-copy best-seller in Japan already. But I think [the trend] is also inconsequential. It’s coincidental. I would’ve acquired this book three years ago; I would acquire it three years from now.
Sometimes you have to be mindful if a topic, in particular nonfiction, has been heavily saturated and you know that there’s fatigue around something. You don’t want to put a writer in a position where their book is going to publish and it’s not going to do anything. That’s just unfair to everyone involved but especially the writer.
You did so many exciting things at Grove, but now you have made the move to Scribner. What made you decide that this was the next natural step for you?
I thought about this for a long time. Scribner is just a dream for a literary editor. It wasn’t an easy decision for me to make. I knew I would sacrifice certain things that I loved in leaving Grove, and God I missed the hell out of my authors. But Scribner also, even though it’s corporate, it felt like such a natural fit for the next step. [Scribner] has such a long and amazing history. I mean, one hundred fifty years of publishing! Their frontlist includes Jesmyn Ward, Kiese Laymon, Colm Tóibín, and Jennifer Egan. And there are so many talented editors over here. I got to a point where I just felt ready for that next step because I wanted to also experience what it might be like at a bigger place, but Scribner is also very akin to Grove in its sensibility. So it was a big change, but it also wasn’t in so many ways.
And when I talked to Nan Graham and Kathy Belden and Colin Harrison, I just knew, “Oh, this is a group of people I will learn so much from.” I wanted to work with Kathy Belden. I was just dying to work with her. Kathy is an amazing mentor, friend, colleague, ally. She really cares about what she does, and she’s brilliant at what she does. And now we have a new publisher, Marysue Rucci, who I also feel like I’m learning a ton from. She is incredible in that her list has this amazing range. And it’s an incredible group of editors like Sally Howe and Rebekah Jett. It’s a phenomenal team. I think they’re some of the best people I’ve worked with.
Do you think that your acquisition philosophy had to change or that it needed to be more expansive?
I have a list to fill, so I’m getting to acquire more, play a bit more, have more of a range. My philosophy hasn’t changed at all. I am still drawn to the same kinds of things. Coincidentally, everything I’ve bought so far in my first year—I bought eleven books—was all international.
What are you excited about this fall?
The aforementioned Lost Souls Meet Under a Full Moon by Mizuki, which is such a captivating book. And next January, Scribner will publish this amazing memoir by Fatima Bhutto called The Hour of the Wolf, which I bought my second week at Scribner.
Hitting the ground running!
I was not thinking, “I am going to buy a book in week two.” I felt like month six I’ll probably find something that I really love. But [agent Amanda] “Binky” Urban sent it to me after she had read my wish list, and she was like, “I have a feeling this is going to be for you.” And she was right. I read it and I loved it. Fatima is an incredible writer on the line level, but she is also telling the story that really spoke to me about her decades-long relationship with someone known only as the Man, who was controlling and manipulative and abusive toward her. It’s a really special book. It’s gorgeous. And I also acquired an amazing debut collection called Sissies by this young writer, hurmat kazmi. These stories are just sucker punches, each and every one. And then I’m also very excited about a short story collection by a now-deceased Irish writer, Mary Lavin, who the New York Times referred to as “Edith Wharton at her best.” So she’s just an amazing, gifted writer who seems to have fallen by the wayside. I don’t want to gender it, but here’s another woman artist or writer who is lost to the canon or lost to history, shoved aside, and I’m hoping that this will be a revival for her on our side of the pond. It’s called An Arrow in Flight.
I think there’s a growing number of women editors who are trying to relaunch a lot of women writers who had been published in the last century but have fallen out of the literary canon. It’s nice that you’re part of this kind of community as well.
I’m trying. I always look for those voices or those histories in fiction and nonfiction. I’m inspired by that kind of thing: that there were these incredible, gifted women writers out there, they have a body of work, and the readership is unaware of them.
I was lucky enough to get to work on Diane Oliver’s Neighbors, which is one of the most genius set of debut stories I’ve come across. I mean, she was very young when she died. She was twenty-two. She died in a motorcycle accident. So these stories are essentially from her teens and very early twenties. And she shows such depth of perception; her characterization is impeccable. You can see her throughout the collection. She starts to experiment in different ways with the short story form, how to use it. And she’s writing about desegregation in the Jim Crow South during the time she was living. So it’s like a sociopolitical portrait in literature of this time.
I love the idea of continuing literary legacies in these different ways, and you’re doing that, which I find so lovely.
That’s very kind of you. I hope so. I mean, I’m an immigrant here, kind of making my way. Not to be a stereotype, but it’s really nice to think that I get to work in this business with all of you amazing people and make some sort of little indent or impression on the surface of the landscape and a deeper one through the work of the authors whose work I get to edit. Because ultimately that’s the goal for me—to put books into the world that will last.
Vivian Lee is a writer and a senior editor at Little, Brown.
