Jamia Wilson is many things: an activist, a feminist, a writer, an editor, a bridge. What connects her many roles is a love of connection with the world, a connection with people and their ideas. She sees what a good future can look like and has been working toward creating this through her love of books, writing, editing, and fostering a new generation of readers and thinkers.

Wilson’s publishing career started at Feminist Press, where she was the executive director and publisher for nearly four years, and continues at Random House, where she was named executive editor and vice president in 2021, but her love of storytelling began decades earlier when she was growing up in front of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves at her parents’ home in Columbia, South Carolina. Having two professors as parents—they both taught at South Carolina State University in Orangeburg as well as at King Saud University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, among other academic institutions—gave her endless opportunities to witness people taking the written word seriously, and at an early age Wilson was taught to value books. “I was given that education young about how you should treat a precious object in your parents’ home,” she says. “I was taught to respect books.”

The respect extended to her career as a writer. Wilson, the author of eight books for young readers, recalls that when she published her first children’s book, Young, Gifted and Black: Meet 52 Black Heroes From Past and Present (Wide Eyed Editions, 2018), her mother gave her the first book she had made as a kid—her mother had saved it for all those years. “It was a book that I made with ribbons and staples and paper clips when I was about five,” Wilson says. “It was about what you would expect: unicorns, dragons, Black mermaids. I was traveling across borders and across galaxies. But I just remember thinking, ‘Wow, that is precious to me that she kept this, that she believed in this. It’s not something frivolous, but something meaningful that I had a sense of purpose at that age, and she believed it.’”

That sense of purpose led her to American University, where she received a BA in communications, and to New York University, where she earned her master’s degree in humanities and social thought. She has been vice president of programs at the Women’s Media Center; a storyteller for TED Conferences; the executive director of Women, Action, and the Media, a nonprofit organization devoted to gender justice in media; a staff writer for Rookie, an online magazine for teenagers; and myriad other roles at the intersection of media and activism.

With a list at Random House that includes 2023 PEN Open Book Award winner Hafizah Augustus Geter’s The Black Period: On Personhood, Race, and Origin, Victor Ray’s On Critical Race Theory: Why It Matters & Why You Should Care, and the forthcoming memoir Lovely One by Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, Wilson holds many roles that coalesce into mission-driven, forward-thinking storytelling that honors the past. We recently spoke about her winding journey into publishing, how feminism and activism should play a part in how we think about books, and what an author’s audience means to editors.

It’s rare that a love of the written word is nurtured and encouraged from such a young age. At what stage were you like, “This is really where I want to be” on a professional level?
I came into publishing in a roundabout way, through a circuitous route, through a lot of different things, but it was always there, this need to find the page as a place not only to express oneself, but also to connect with others or connect with other points of view, to engage, to find meaning. I feel grateful for that and have always leaned into it when I saw an opportunity that would allow more of it, more opportunities to read, more opportunities to be curious, more opportunities to amplify voices the world needs to hear.

I’m fascinated by those circuitous journeys into publishing. I would love to hear about yours.
I came to publishing when I arrived at Feminist Press. When I look back I think, “I was very adjacent to publishing and book publishing,” because I was working at the intersection of online media, broadcast media, print, and activism for a long time, and I was working sometimes on books for those initiatives, on the books of thought leaders in those initiatives, sometimes contributing to anthologies. But it really became clear to me one day when Jennifer Baumgardner, who is now the CEO of Dottir Press—she has her own imprint and is also the former executive director of Feminist Press—invited me into the Feminist Press office. We’d had a long relationship in the feminist movement, and she was someone who I’d also read growing up and really looked up to.

As an editor, she’d been at Ms. magazine and had written books that helped grow my thinking around feminism. She invited me in and asked, “What are you doing right now? What are you thinking about in your future? What do you want to do?” I was telling her about an idea that a friend and I were thinking up that was about creating our own media and book-type projects. I was also talking with her about wanting to do more with Feminist Press, because I had done some panels with them and written some contributions for them. She said, “Well, one of the reasons I’m inviting you in is that I’m about to leave and there’s going to be this opening, and the board of directors is going to choose who the next director is. But I was wondering if you had considered putting your hat in the ring.”

That question was so powerful because I remember thinking, “Oh, this would be a dream job.” I’d had this idea that if you hadn’t come into publishing traditionally—and I hadn’t started out as an editorial assistant in a traditional house—that maybe it’d be hard. But she believed in me and said, “No guarantees, but I think there’s a lot you have to say, there’s a lot you’ve done, your experience writing for Rookie, your perspectives on those things.” Rookie had books, and I’d also been participating in the book process as an author, and I worked with the TED Books team. She said, “I think you should go for it.” That catapulted me into delights I could never have dreamed of and doors opening. But it was really that conversation that sparked it.

At Feminist Press what did day one look like for you?
Feminist Press was an amazing place to be. Every day was an adventure. The small press environment: Everybody knows all the books because there is a smaller curated list. Everyone on the team knows every facet of what’s going on with any book, even if it’s not a book they’re directly editing. We’re all working on every book in some way. That was exciting, just to be all in, all the time. To get an intimate look at the publishing process at a close-knit, mission-driven press with a lot of history in a way that was very, very intergenerational. We would have editorial meetings that were done in a feminist style that would have the Feminist Press apprentices—which is what we called the interns—the staff, sometimes the founder [Florence Howe, who was in her nineties], and board members, and we would talk about those submissions as a group.

The spirit behind it was that we were a very mission-driven list and a tight community, and we knew everyone was going to have their hands on each and every book, so we should have all the voices in on the shaping of the position of the book. That was a very special experience. Being a part of that and being able to taste all the delights of all parts of publishing, that even if your job wasn’t necessarily marketing or publicity or foreign rights, you would get a taste of that because of the small accessible nature of the press. There was always just a passion for publishing as a craft. There were things that we would do for people who wanted to dive in and trade ideas and expertise. Lauren Hook [then senior editor, now editorial director], an amazing person, would do a grammar club, where people could come and study the Chicago Manual of Style together in a fun way, for example.

That tickles the very nerdy wordy part of me! I love that.
It was so great. I mean, that’s just one taste. My office there, I think about that office a lot because every book Feminist Press had ever done was on the shelves. They had one copy of each. To be able to be hugged by those books every day. I would think about that as something new was coming in: “How does this sit in conversation with the other books on the list over the past almost fifty years?” [That kind of] publishing offers so much value for everyone to experience and to learn [from] the spirit of it, but also the collaborative nature with other presses; we were part of a radical publishing collective. We had a sales conference with other small publishers, and that spirit of camaraderie, but also the trading of ideas and resources, is very special.

How are you bringing yourself from Feminist Press to Random House? You have such an activist mind and a unique way of looking at books. How are you bringing that ethos into this new role?
Thank you for asking that question. I’ve really enjoyed being at Random House. It’s been an amazing experience. I am excited to be a part of a list I’ve always read. My parents loved Random House books. We had so many of them. I went home recently, and I saw a ton of Random House style guides from before I was born, books from the seventies. It was amazing to think, “Oh, I wonder if my now-deceased mom would’ve ever thought that I would end up working here. I wonder what she would think about this,” and knowing that she loved it. I found in one of her journals that she had wanted to write a book and that her dream publisher was Random House.

That is very meaningful to me. I felt like I was meant to find it. When I did decide to go to Random House, one of the things that intrigued me the most, in addition to the resources and the ability to support the authors I work with, is the impact of this storied list that has shaped how generations think. I thought about it as a profound opportunity to grow myself as an editor and as a publishing human. I also thought about what it would mean to be a part of creating more expansive publishing on my own list and growing and expanding what it is that I think I could contribute as an editor. Because of the clarion call of what Random House is and how it started, there was something about it that really appealed to me, because I’ve always been someone who’s done a lot of different things, a multihyphenate.

Yes! Tell me more about the multi-hyphenate.
There was always a through-line, but you had to connect it like a hybrid mix, like a hybrid memoir and a hybrid book. I’m a hybrid human. For me, to be in a generalist space where I can be interested in a lot of things with that thread—that’s still the heart and the vision and the soul of the kinds of books I set out to publish. I just knew that this would be the right next step. For me, although I was so in love with Feminist Press and remain in love with Feminist Press, I also felt like, “There’s something happening in publishing right now.” This was the summer of 2020 when these conversations were happening. I thought, “There’s a shifting happening.”

Although I loved where I was, there was this opportunity, and what would it mean if I stepped into something else? Who else gets to ascend because of my moving? That was important to me to think about, because there are so many amazing people who have a vision and want to move up in this industry as well. All those things are in my mind. I also thought about the opportunity to be mentored by [former senior vice president and editor in chief of Random House] Robin Desser, who I was then reporting to, and [executive vice president and publisher] Andy Ward and [vice president and editorial director of nonfiction] Ben Greenberg, just to be able to learn how to make really impactful books from the people I had been looking up to for so long, and to take the spirit that has always been at Feminist Press to Random House and to shape and build a list.

Can you talk more about that work of shaping and building a list?
What is the thread that ties the books I like together? I think for me it is books that inspire empathy, books that ignite connections between people, books that move people to action—that [can mean] a lot of different kinds of books but also amplifying voices that need to be heard, expanding the conversation, books that speak to justice, to liberation, to freedom, to healing, to transformation. I feel proud that in almost two years’ time I have a feminist theologian, Meggan Watterson, on the same list with the Lucas Brothers, who are comedians and writers and filmmakers, on the same list as Tressie McMillan Cottom, who is a sociologist and a professor. I love that. But you can see the thread. To be able to have voices like those together on one list is a dream come true for me.

I remember most of those projects came over the transom here at Little, Brown, too. I remember how awe-inspiring they were. You touched on this a little bit already, but I’d love to get even more specific. When you open that document from an agent, what is that special thing you feel?
When I first look at a submission, the voice is extremely important to me. If I am drawn to the voice, it makes me curious, it makes me want more, it inspires feeling within me. It stirs something up, and that could be a wide range of things.

Then I think about the core audience for this book. Who would read this book and feel like they see themselves in these pages or see themselves grow or see themselves learn or see themselves challenged by this? That’s important to me. Then also, what new ground could this book break? Having come from an indie [press], I’m interested in that. A lot of times in my memos or notes, I’ll say, “This is the first time in this space that we’ve seen a woman of color specifically address this in this way,” or “The first time we’ve seen a trans voice in this space addressing this.”

Those are the key questions I ask: “Why now? Why us? Why are we the right publisher to publish it? What impact can we make? What’s new and what’s now and what’s next about it?” Those are some of the questions I like to engage. What are the interesting insights this provides that need to be developed? What are the insights that have been said in a new way that can be said only by this author? And where would it sit on our list?

With all of that, is the author bio important to you?
That’s an interesting question. I’m a curious person by nature, so I like to know—more is more, for me. I like it when I know a lot about an author because if I’m intrigued by the voice on the page or the subject matter, I am going to start Googling. I am going to start trying to find more writing by this human, because I want to know more. I say more is more, that I like the author bio, because I’d like to know the mind and the heart behind this, but also who are the communities they’re bringing with them when they write and who will they be speaking to? Who will they be bringing forth? That might even be their ancestors, departed or still here. I’m very curious about that.

I feel like I’ve seen that done in different ways. I had one submission I loved, one I loved and lost, but it went to someone great in our group—it came with a video, and it had an author bio, but the video was the author talking about their book like they were my friend. I remember thinking, “Oh, they’re creative, they are thinking in a different way, and I’m getting a sense of their voice and where it can go that’s even deeper than what I see on the page. I think I could be a good editor in developing that.” There are humans behind each and every submission we receive. I like knowing the most that I can know in a submission, because it helps to give you a fuller picture. That’s why the meeting is so important too.

What else can be important to you in a submission query? Do comps matter to you, or prestige in awards or education?
For me it goes back to the question of audience. It’s helpful to envisage what the audience might look like. Sometimes I’ll see in the author something that might be important to know but wasn’t one of the things they thought added to the prestige and the bio; it’s something I happen to know about that person that I think is cool or important or adds nuance. For me it’s very specific, but also really comes back to voice, too. I’m really drawn to voice-driven writing, and it helps to know if someone has reach.

But I also think it helps to know where [the writer is] no matter what, because that informs the strategy needed to get that voice out in the world. I think about that often and don’t want people to be discouraged, because sometimes I’ll have friends who will say, “Oh, I don’t have X number of followers on X social media outlet or something like that.” My thought is more: Refine those pages, get those pages really good, get really good at talking about your strengths. Because if you have a book that is going to inspire people to want to acquire it, they will strategize with you on how to build that audience. They will strategize with you on who might be the audiences who would love your books.

I mean, that’s one of the things about the mighty comp we always talk about, like “Readers who like this book, might like this book.” We see this in all our curated lives, but I just want to drive home to people that I really care about the writing. I really care about the voice. I really care about the meaning. Yes, tell me about your audience. That is great. I want to hear about the grassroots strategies that people have because that’s something I came in with from Feminist Press and those are valuable. Sometimes I’ll know something about someone who I know from the community and I’ll say, “Hey, why wasn’t this in here? This is meaningful. You do X number of talks at schools a year. You have access to an amazing community network with this program that you’re in.” More is more. I want more of those conversations happening too.

You mentioned briefly how publishing had this big shakeup and change in the summer of 2020 and it piqued your attention. Do you see publishing continuing to change? Or do you feel like it’s returning to a status quo of sorts?
I’ve always been someone who’s held a long view. A lot of the mentors I’ve had, including the mentors who never met me but mentored me on the page, talk about holding the long view. What I’m really doing as I’m settling into this new job—as I’m building my list, meeting agents, meeting writers—is thinking about how to enliven and model my vision for this list in this industry. How do I think about equity and justice in the process of how I engage with and how I treat my authors, how we publish their books, how we collaborate with others, how we position those books, how we have conversations about those books, how we get them to new readers and audiences?

That’s always been my approach. Not knocking other approaches, but I see myself as someone who has the deep commitment and conviction to hold the vision for my authors and their work. I love my authors and I’m a devoted advocate for them and the work they’re putting out in the world, but also around the meaning and the voices that they’re trying to lift up and elevate in that work. I’m holding that long view because I want to be accountable to my own values and virtues in how I’m doing this work. But then also really thinking about, when I look back ten years from now, what it was that I did here, what books I have out in the world, whose voices I supported and helped amplify and champion—I’m hoping that will be part of a larger story of publishing that we’re envisaging into life right now as a collective community.

I know I’m speaking micro into the macro, but that’s really how I’m thinking about it. Coming from an indie into a really big place, I’m drilling down into the intricacies of this role and in viewing those values in everything I do.

That was a big part of what I learned at Feminist Press, that this is possible. Being able to bring that into this other space has been very cool. One of the reasons that I came on at the time that I did, too, is because I felt like there was something powerful about a community of people making this move at the same time. That’s another part of why I’m holding the long view on that, because when you plant a seed, the seed takes time to blossom.

What does activism look like for you in this publishing space?
I am still very passionate about feminist publishing and the power of independent publishing and why we need a diverse ecosystem of expression and art in the world.

During my time at Feminist Press I had an opportunity to be a part of that ecosystem and meet a lot of amazing people doing that work in so different ways, in global ways and mission-driven ways. I’m still interested in participating in it, just in a different way—through the values, and bringing those values into how I do the work and how I do my list, but also in supporting those organizations I care about, donating to nonprofit publishing initiatives that allow even more support for a variety of voices, for marginalized voices.

I love being a part of grassroots work. I’m still involved in several other nonprofits that aren’t publishing-related. It’s been interesting to be able to participate in new ways, too.

The other day I participated in a panel. Michele Filgate had been hosting a series, the Red Ink series, and she held a panel at this amazing brewery in Brooklyn, and it was hosted by Liber: A Feminist Review. And Lux Magazine was there, and Bridgette M. Davis, who had been one of my authors at Feminist Press, who’s published amazing books, including one, I think, with Little, Brown. We also had Debbie Stoller from Bust magazine; I grew up reading Bust and now I write for Bust. I love Bust.

Being on that panel and being able to talk with Jennifer Baumgardner, too, who I talked with you about earlier, and to be able to have a conversation about the role of feminist publishing and why it’s important, why we need to support it. After I came home from that panel, we talked about it and we talked about the ecosystem and we talked about the work and why these spaces are important, and then the communities that they cultivate, which is extremely important to me. And I just started buying subscriptions for next year because that is important to our literary citizenship, and I was feeling inspired to say, “I need to start getting my 2023 subscriptions ready early,” before the holidays, so that these folks have this income in because I know it from the other side, in the beginning of next year. It felt really amazing to think about how we all need each other and how we’re interdependent.

I devoted my birthday fundraiser this year to PEN America—they just do such an important work. I've always been a fan and wanted to participate in all ways that I could with anything PEN-related. That’s just another example, too, of how I feel like I’m still finding my way to stay involved. Also, we have some cool initiatives, at Penguin Random House, around corporate social responsibility, etcetera, and we are encouraged to be involved.

I think that that’s always going to be a part of who I am. It’s a part of how I see the world, and it’s been really interesting for me now, too, to experience it in different ways from different vantage points, still being a participant, but also making ways for other people to participate in bigger ways and to learn from the next generation. I often say to folks at the different nonprofits I’m a part of, “How can you use me to help you? How can I be of help to you? Who can I connect you with? In what way can I contribute?” I think all of that is important. It’s always going to be near to my heart.

There are so many beautiful full-circle moments for you in this space, both being at Random House and seeing your mother’s journals about it, and then seeing people who’d given you that opening or who have opened that door for you as a kid into this worldview. What is the next generation teaching you and what have you been learning from the new generation of folks?
One of the things I love to say, because it’s true, is Tavi Gevinson is one of the best bosses I’ve ever had in my life. It was such an honor to be a part of Rookie and to have learned from her leadership. She had a strong vision. She was able to have a vision, hold it, be creative, and was always about creating exclusive and expansive space. It was always about community and the collective and how our readers would feel when they were in our comments section, when they met us in person, and when they were reading us on the page. It made a deep impression on me, that discernment, that vision, that integrity, coming from a fifteen-year-old, and that strong leadership and creative leadership she had and continues to hold, and the leadership she held when she decided to say that Rookie was going to have its last day and her reasons why, to maintain that, to maintain what had been created, and its integrity.

That just made such a deep impression on me. It taught me something that my mom used to always say, that you don’t always listen to lessons the first time they come to you. She used to say to me, “Sometimes your problem is that you expect people to act their age, and age has nothing to do with maturity.” One of the things I love about the next generation is that there’s a whole lot of heart, there’s a whole lot of integrity, and there’s a lot of urgency because the planet is urgent. The conditions that this generation is having to face are heightened, heightened, from the very dire conditions of my generation, those generations before. That urgency feels right to me.

So I come from that experience of learning from the deep emotional, spiritual, visionary, creative maturity of Tavi Gevinson, and the many times in which I felt like I had things to share that people wouldn’t listen to because they came from a body that people didn’t see as a leader. And that leads me to be very curious, very interested, and very intrigued by the vision that the next generation has, and to be a supporter, to be an enthusiastic cheerleader and friend to growth and change.

I’ve had the blessing of people like that in my life. Florence Howe, former director and publisher of Feminist Press, the founder, was an amazing mentor to me. Sometimes she would say to me things like, “Oh, that’s not something I would’ve acquired, but I trust why you acquired it because you know what is needed for this moment.”

So I feel very attracted to that energy in people. I also had that from Carol Jenkins, who is a media mentor of mine, and Gloria Steinem, both of whom have always been people who had that thread, that maturity, maturity that is timeless, that is intergenerational. So that’s just something I really want to honor in others. I want to be a person and a beacon to the next generation, who people feel they can come to for that collaboration, support, and community. Because it took those people believing in me and trusting my voice to help me also see what I couldn’t yet see in myself. Not that anyone needs me to see that in them. It’s more that I just think it’s important to have that kind of affirmation, interdependence.

You wear so many hats—in the media space, in the activism space, and you are writing both children’s books and pieces for so many wonderful feminist outlets. How does that inform your work as an editor?
I have a lot of empathy for writers because I hold this need—like the need for oxygen and water and food—to write. It’s something I have always done, that I will always do. It’s very important to me. I wake up in the morning and I write pages. It’s how my brain functions best. If it’s not too much of an overshare I’ll just say there have been times where my partner will say, “Have you written today? Because somebody needs to write.”

But I have that empathy of being on the other side of it. I know what it feels like to have a deadline and that blank page staring at you, and then I think, “Now is a good time to clean my house and do every other thing than that thing because of everything that it brings up in me,” then go through the feeling of like, “Am I a writer? Why do I even write all these things,” to then come back to doing it and getting in the zone and loving it and then delivering it and wondering, “Wait, how did that even happen?” And then choosing to do that, to go through that process again. It takes a unique kind of human to want to do that to yourself, and I bow to those humans because essentially what they’re doing is saying to the world, “Here’s my brain and here’s my heart for you to make sense and meaning of and potentially critique,” and it takes a courageous soul to do that.

So for anyone who’s a writer, even if it’s not my style of writing or not my cup of tea, you have my respect because it is a very intimate, brave, impactful, courageous activity to engage in; and to make it your craft throughout a lifetime is a whole other conversation. So I just love working with writers because of who we are: people who seek meaning, who seek to make meaning, the soulfulness of the writer. Then to be able to say to someone who has just seen the pages too many times, and they just don’t see the gems that we see and the treasures we see, to be able to say to them, “But look at all these treasures!” And we’re going to have to not put this there—but these instructions right here, this is the gem, this is the heart. There’s something about it that thrills me, and I will never get over that thrill of writing the editorial note and talking about how I was moved by this person.

I used to be a dancer, growing up, and I took a lot of dance, and I was into music. I’ve always been into art. It’s almost like watching someone do a modern dance: just a pure expression of themselves, like bringing up tears. I feel that when I see writing that I just know came from a really deep place, peeling back layers that you are just amazed that anyone would give you access to. It’s so beautiful. To get to do that again and again and again and again is such a treat. I love that.

What is exciting you? What are you looking forward to?
One of the things I’m excited about is publishing a wide range of books and stories. It’s important to me to show that we, as people of color in publishing, hold, just like other editors, a wide range of interests, a wide range of imagination, a wide range of connections to things that are important and meaningful. I’m very curious and interested in a wide range of conversations and a wide range of authors from all backgrounds. I think it’s important to always keep a wide, expansive, and vast imagination about what any individual editor might be interested in.

There have been many times when people were surprised by something that I’m interested in, when they thought, “Oh, I wouldn’t have thought you’d be interested in this because you were at Feminist Press.” Yes, that is a part of who I am. I am a Black feminist, thank the Lorde with an E that I have had that theory and that way of seeing the world and that philosophy to shape who I am and how I see the world. That also means that I have been influenced by a great deal and a great diversity of thinkers from around the world of different genres, of different backgrounds, of different perspectives.

I’m open to new challenges, to being expanded, just as I hope to open and expand for audiences and readers and for people who I’m working with. I’m open to that, too. What I really wish for us, more and more, like I said, is more and more moving up, moving up into more imagination, more expansiveness.

I feel like that’s really the move there.
Thank you so much. I’m curious—because I’ve talked to other editors of color about this—I’m curious what your thoughts are about that too.

It resonates with me. I think, especially as editors of color, there are times when I feel pigeonholed by what I’m being sent because they’re like, “Oh, you’re the only Asian person here, so I’m just going to send you all the Asian books.” I’m like, “I’m happy to read all of them, but that’s a huge umbrella, and it feels like a lot of pressure to be the only gatekeeper of “Asian literature” here. I’m one person. So I think it is about expanding that. For me it is sharing that wealth and being like, more of these stories need to be told. I don’t need to be the only one who is helping with that. I have other interests both in the nonfiction and fiction space. I’m always happy to explore. Again, always excited to be challenged by something. I think that makes you a better editor when you are challenged.
I love that you’re talking about it. One of the things I’ve really loved is that I’ve been getting a lot of support from my bosses at Penguin Random House, who say, “You being you is good for your list and our list.” I have had all these different experiences, these different perspectives, and they inform the way that I look at the world, the way I look at a book. That’s why I want more [agents] to diversify what they send all of us, which is why I like having frank conversations. I’m glad we’re all starting to have meetings again, because I’ve said to people, “You can send me XYZ.” Because sometimes people think, “Oh, I thought you’d be offended if I sent you something that wasn’t this.” Everyone’s trying to figure it out, like, what’s the right balance?

I always want to hear about your list. I want to hear about what you’re working on and how I can support your books. That’s something else that’s important to me. I talk about it with other friends: the spirit of Feminist Press, supporting one another’s books even when we’re working in different houses.

Yes! I don’t believe in that scarcity mind-set. Editors of color are about building that community.
Exactly. And it’s abundant, and I really feel that. That’s why when there are auctions and I lose to an editor who I know is doing work to expand, I’m kind of like, “Great to lose to you!” You know what I mean? Like, “Thank you. And thank you for bringing even more value in this landscape to this kind of author.” It’s so important.

Vivian Lee is a writer and a senior editor at Little, Brown.