1. You’ve been in the industry for over 30 years, now! What aspects of a manuscript move you enough to make an acquisition? How have your literary tastes changed over the course of your career? What’s remained the same?

 

Oh dear, it’s been more than 40 years: I started at New Directions right out of college, in 1984.       

I don’t think my literary tastes have changed much, though I think my appreciation for comedy has increased a bit, and maybe I’m a little less of a snob, possibly.

Luckily, I landed at a small house whose books I already had enjoyed, growing up (Borges, Nabokov, Nat West, Dazai), so maybe ND had already shaped my tastes. 

In any case, we try very much to follow in the footsteps of our founder James Laughlin who thought the purpose of publishing was for authors to make their experiments in public.  Nowadays, authors like Borges and Sartre and Tennessee Williams and William Carlos Williams are all central to the canon of western literature, but back when he first brought them out, they were all considered very far-out and radical.

So, we are always looking for something that knocks us out.  We do have these semi-cracked conversations here about whether or not a given writer is “New Directions-y,” by which we mean is it somehow pushing the envelope, doing something new, expanding the possibilities of a given form?

And we do tend to hoe the same old row—we stick to our narrow, still experimental-fiction-biased little bailiwick, which these authors, each in his or her own odd way, all fit, disparate as they all are: César Aira, Laszlo Krasznahorkai, Clarice Lispector, Nathanial Mackey, Helen DeWitt, Yoko Tawada, Keith Ridgway, Solvej Balle, Roberto Bolaño, John Keene, W.G. Sebald—and Anne de Marcken.

 

2. How did It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over make it onto your desk? What did

you find most compelling about De Marcken’s work and what aspects did you

urge her to lean into during the editorial process? How has your working

relationship evolved over the novel’s life cycle?

 

It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over was submitted to the second iteration of our biennial Novel Prize, which we run with Fitzcarraldo in the UK and Giramondo in Australia: it is a global prize for a novel in English, and we three houses work together to choose the best one from the more than a thousand novels submitted to us. 

 

I loved Anne’s book as soon as I started it: I really didn’t want to put it down. And as the prize decision was approaching, I wrote in my memo to my fellow judges:

 

“I find hers the most truly original voice on the short list. This is one of the most original and brave books I have read about death, loneliness, fear, change—and how mortality changes everything, except possibly love. De Marcken delivers a near-Beckettian whopping to the reader. Truly I do feel this is worthy of a prize and it would be a big error not to select IT LASTS FOREVER—at least for New Directions: it will in my opinion add much shine to the prize. And I will publish De Marcken whether she wins or not.”

 

IT LASTS FOREVER was a very finished piece when it was submitted, and I felt it didn’t need much editing at all.  As to the edit, the only thing I remember comes from that same memo: I noted that, if it won, I’d be suggesting “strongly to the author that one conceit is too precious: say the single pages with just a line or fragment of a line: (see p 230, with three words). Better to have blocks of space (maybe triple spaces) above and below lone drama lines—and just avoid what could be construed as formal posturing, the sort of thing many knee-jerk reviewers would pounce on: the book will be stronger and tighter without that device. She can trust that her words deliver everything she wants without that.” 

Anne was super easy to work with, and fun too.  It’s a huge plus that she’s also a publisher herself!  She gets that an editor is only trying to help.

 

3. What are some of your personal editorial dos and donts? What advice do you

have for writers and agents beginning to pitch their projects? What mistakes

should they steer clear of and what aspects of the submission process should they

lean further into?

 

I benefited from my boss Griselda’s advice to first read the book with care and make general notes, then sit down and edit it with care. Next, let that marked-up edit sit for a few days, and then read over all your suggestions from the start, and apply what she called the “six of one / half a dozen of the other rule”: at this point you probably more deeply know what the writer is trying to accomplish, and if your edits aren’t a real improvement, then leave the author in peace. Avoid splitting hairs, in other words.

 

Oh, pitching—that is a tough question.  I’d suggest being concise in your cover letter, not being shy (if famous writers have praised you, yes: quote them!), listing anywhere your work has appeared before (previous books, magazine publications, etc), any awards you’ve received, and giving a short sample of the prose proper (even just half a paragraph) within the cover letter for an instant taste, and then attaching the whole manuscript.  And patience is really appreciated: we get thousands of manuscripts—it’s bananas.  A gentle reminder a couple of months after you sent in a manuscript is a good idea.

 

 

4. How has the transition from editor to president to publisher been for you? How

has occupying these different roles impacted the way you work with writers and

choose what acquisitions you make?

 

Well, we are a really small house (six of the 10 employees edit) and I’m editing just as many books as publisher as I was back when I was the editor in chief—we all work together.  My change of title doesn’t change how we acquire books, though increasingly I do try to encourage the younger editors as much as I can: therefore, I don’t stand in the way of projects a majority of them are passionate about, even if it’s not a book I’m keen on personally. We aim for consensus (so everyone in the house is totally behind a book), but that isn’t necessary (who cares if I don’t love a book of autofiction) and total consensus might even have the undesirable side effect of the list becoming sort of bland or mayonnaise-slathered.

 

5. Do you have any encouraging words for emerging writers right now, yearning to

break into traditional publishing amid the rising investment in AI technologies

and anti-intellectualism? How do we continue to write when the world seems to

tell us no one cares about human storytelling anymore?

 

I don’t believe we will ever not care about human storytelling. It’s all we have (well, except for the stories my cat tries to tell me about starvation). I also don’t believe art can be created by AI.

Publishing is always avid to find new voices—we may not, however, always hear them.  We may fail to “get” a particular one at ND, but there are so many publishers.  I think you have to persist and you also have to work on various fronts: don’t just send manuscripts of books to publishers—send stories and poems and novel excerpts to the magazines and reviews, submit them for prizes, read them in public.