Leading Literary Lives is an original feature here at Mint Tea and A Good Book. Through Leading Literary Lives, people who work in the book industry are interviewed. As teenagers and book lovers, we are always looking for careers that deal with books.
I had the privilege of interviewing the one and only, fabulous, book editor Amy Goldwasser. Here we go!
1. In your own words what does "editor" really mean?
Excellent question—and the fact that there's no easy answer is
exactly why I love what I do. Editor can mean a stunning range of things; it
surprises me regularly what I find myself doing and somehow that it falls under
the title of "editor," whether that's conceiving an entire
publication from the ground-up, big ideas, to doing a precise line-by-line edit
with a writer to wrangling celebrities to writing headlines to working with
creative directors on design to curating a reading. In the case of RED, my role
as editor included: having the idea for the book, putting out a call for
essays, choosing and compiling the essays and writing a proposal, selling a
proposal to an agent and then a publisher, editing the essays (working with 58
authors), then promoting the book forever forward since its publication, which
I still do some form of every day. So you see, lots of excitement and
ideas-generating, as well as lots of tedious get-it-done type tasks.
The role of an editor is wonderfully wide-open and probably accordingly,
often misunderstood. It also tends to be very anonymous and behind-the-scenes,
so that's something to think about personality-wise. To be a good editor, I
think you need to be someone who likes to call the shots and have the ideas,
but don't necessarily need the recognition/your name on it. This is something I
tell my students, who are more often than not drawn to the glamour of writing
vs. the unknown of editing. If writing is acting, then editing is directing.
They're such different sides of media-making, really, and such a perfect
complement, relationship, when they work well together.
2. What are your plans for any future books like Red?
Oh, I'd love it to be a whole regular franchise: RED in a
similar version to this first one, only done annually (like the Best American
series), regionally (NY RED, LA RED, so on), by topic, fiction, even, so many
possibilities. But practically, right now, I'm having a blast taking the book
into other media, realizing how alive it is vs. just being a collection of
pages that sit on a table. We're adapting it for theater, with the authors as
playwrights, songwriters, set designers, etc. Everything RED has to be true to
the original ethos: It's young, raw talent paired with the mentorship and
access professionals provide, whether that professional is an editor or a DJ or
a theater director or a composer or a fashion designer, etc.
3. This November is the 5th anniversary of Red’s original
publication. Are you still in contact with some of the girls? Have you been
able to see them grow and change?
Absolutely I'm still in contact—I'd say every day with at least
one of them. There are 58 girls in the book, and I've been working with, in
touch with, about 40 of them regularly since publication. I kind of work
for them now, and there's nothing I like better. I encourage them to send their
new writing all the time, and I'm their editor, for publication in our RED Hearts
blog (iheartdaily.com),
national op-ed pieces on everything from financial-aid reform to racism to the
phenomenon of "fauxting," and for serious venues like the Boston
Globe, The Huffington Post, the LA Times. Again, I consider them professional
writers in every way. Probably most striking of all is what a difference four
or five years can make at that age, especially for some of the book's youngest
writers. A 13-year-old and a 17-year-old are entirely different creatures. But
still who they are; I love that I can still see them in there, always true to
their voices.
4. What’s a typical week day like for you?
Again, because of the weird way I make a living, it's entirely not a routine. I never know what I'm going to wake up to. Can be very isolated and quiet, holed up reading a long book manuscript, to being in an office, managing dozens of people on an issue of a magazine closing that night. Food or football, genocide to fashion, interviewing job candidates to translating a print product into its best apps and social media. And today I am answering interview questions that include one about tea... There's no typical. I love that.
5. How do you think your experience editing Red would’ve been different if boys were submitting the essays?
By the way, I have NOTHING against boys! I just started with girls because this was an experiment, and I happen to work with girls—was just easier. I've always wanted to, and still will, put together a collection of writing by boys. And since touring with RED, all we've found in audiences and such, it sure seems like boys are writing as smartly and freely about their own lives as girls are. The catch though, I suspect, is in owning that writing. It was a big deal to me that the authors of RED put their full names on their essays. It was non-negotiable and I fought hard for it; none of this patronizing "Amy G" business. I wanted to work with and honor them in every way the same as I do with professional adult writers. Back to the boys, I found they were more comfortable coming up to me one-on-one after a reading or a play performance and talking me through what they would write about. I'm not sure if it would have been harder for some of them to put their full names on their pieces, for everyone to see. Somehow I got a sense that anonymity might assure a stronger, more honest pool of essays if I solicit them from boys in the future, whereas for girls, putting their full names on their writing was an appeal. But I'm just guessing, and I hate to overgeneralize anything at all between sexes. I won't really know until I try.
6. What other literary work have you done besides Red?
I edit a lot of literary writers for shorter-form magazine and
web pieces all the time, as well as book editing, all part of what I do for a
living. A really exciting book I've been working on for years now is a
non-fiction account of the Armenian genocide that the author is basing on
memoirs from her grandfather. I keep telling her she's writing the hardest book
ever: re-creating that time, speaking for an entire people, representing her
family, then the politics, the geography, everything. And as far as my role,
this goes back to how many forms the role of editor can take: I was doing this
at the same time I was working with teenagers on RED and say, interviewing
celebrities or curating fashion pages. High and low.
7. What is your day job? What education did you have to go
through to get where you are today?
I'm a New York-based freelance editorial consultant who
specializes in launches and relaunches, print and digital. Books, magazines,
websites, apps, sometimes a client will hire me to just do naming—of a product
or a media property. See above for how much this role of editor can encompass.
It keeps me constantly surprised and challenged, as I have to learn to work
with all kinds of subject areas and all kinds of people. I went to the
University of Wisconsin-Madison and studied English and creative writing; I
spent my junior year abroad, in Paris at the Sorbonne. I'm a huge supporter of
travel and seeing different worlds as the real education, not really degrees on
paper. But most of my education was on the job. Much to my parents' disappointment,
I quit a full-time job, my first one, in PR in Chicago, to take an internship
at a magazine. It was the best move I ever made, even though I was waiting
tables to make it work. Always, always, if you can swing it, take internships
and anything available to put you on-site, where you can learn, study...and be
right there under people's noses when it comes to hiring. I ended up at that
job for years, and it taught me most of what I know today.
8. What’s your favorite aspect of your job? Least favorite?
Oooh, another good question. Both my most and least favorite
aspects come down to people: My most favorite is probably when I have a great
relationship as an editor with a writer, and we raise each other's game, do
work neither of us could do without the help of the other. There's nothing more
satisfying than a successful collaboration. My least favorite is having to
collaborate with someone who doesn't share a sensibility. It's painful to see a
project all the way through, knowing it's compromised.
9. What other jobs have you held before you took your current
one?
Aside from that very first and very quick entry-level PR job,
I've always been an editor, or at least worked in editorial. Before starting
working for myself in 2000, I was full-time on staff at: Outside magazine,
Charged (I launched one of the very first "content-provider webzines"
as the world called websites then, in 1996), Epicurious, and Metropolis. I also
teach and always have, currently in the Columbia Publishing Course and volunteering
at the Lower Eastside Girls Club in my neighborhood. I make sure that's part of
my life because I love it.
10. What are your future career goals?
More RED! Or at least RED-inspired—I'd like to put together an
entire multimedia publication, all young talent+professional mentorship. I'm
new to theater, one of the wonderful things this project brought into my life,
and I'm wild about it. I'd like to write a play, maybe direct someday. What a
truly creative medium; it's completely open to experimentation. You can try it
this way then step back and say, Hey, what if we do it this way. Like editing
in 3D.
11. What surprised you the most when you were reading the Red
submissions?
How original and honest everyone's voices were/are. You could
really feel it, the authenticity. I had the shocking realization that as
adults, adult writers especially, we learn to self-censor and how to please and
fit formats, particularly in personal essays. We learn how to present ourselves
and make others happy. But the RED submissions were so fresh, always with
unexpected, weird metaphors or no resolution or epiphany, every single one an
original. Also, how funny these writers are! I don't think the world
necessarily thinks of teenage girls as great comedians or a set that's most
willing to laugh at themselves. But they were so often hilarious and
self-depracating. It's not all high-drama and narcissism.
12. If there was a book like Red out when you were a teenager,
how do you think it would’ve been the same? How would it have been different?
Do you think it would've been more censored?
I think the overall quality and quantity of essays might have
been less. I was a teenager who happened to write quite a bit—but that's
because I was particularly into that, that kind of (nerdy) kid, English class
and spelling bees and student government. But I think the Internet has made
writers out of every teenager or person in their 20s today. It's made writing
something you do in everyday life, about everyday life. Does that make sense? For
a little more on that, an essay I wrote for Salon: http://www.salon.com/2008/03/14/kids_and_internet/
13. How was the title of Red chosen? Did you choose it? What is
the meaning behind the title?
It's in there [the book intro] lots, everything passionate and angry and primary-color
invested red vs. the watered-down, girlie pink cliche. Bloody Red Heart (the
title of one of the essays within, and my original one for the book) instead of
Puffy Pink Heart, an antidote.
14. And, the classic Mint Tea and A Good Book question, what is
your favorite kind of tea?
I drink A LOT of tea, and my favorite happens to be mint (close second:
ginger). Right now that's Revolution Southern Mint Herbal Tea. They come in
these exquisite little fine fabric-y, pyramid-shaped tea bags, which make the
whole thing a treat, perfect break in the workday, reason to step away from the
computer screen for at least the time it makes to boil water, steep, and change
the iTunes playlist.
