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Editor's Desk

From the Editor’s Desk: Peter Gethers, President, Random House Studio and Senior Vice President, Editor at Large Penguin Random House on Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler

Editors get very passionate about books they work on – the Editor’s Desk series is his or her place to write in-depth about what makes a certain title special. Get the real inside-scoop on how books are shaped by the people who know them best. There are several things that are most thrilling to a book editor. First and foremost is the discovery of true talent. Everything else extends from that. Next on the list is when other people throughout the company respond to that talent positively and excitedly. When strong enough, that response not only becomes electric, it becomes unstoppable. At its most exciting it becomes a tidal wave of appreciation for a book or a writer. Next, of course, is the validation that comes from a wider audience – The bookstore buyers, managers and sales people and then, finally, actual real people who make the final judgment on the book. Over the course of my lengthy career, I have brought in a lot of great talent and some major stars. That is satisfying in its own right. But it does not compare to the discovery of a writer who is fresh, unknown, who is to be revealed. I have never seen a response to an unknown talent like the one I have seen for Stephanie Danler’s Sweetbitter. It started with my read where, after only 20 pages, I realized I was not just reading a well-written novel, I was reading something special, spectacular. Claudia Herr, who became the line editor and helped shape and refine the novel with Stephanie, was the next reader and the first person to come into my office. She was, literally, trembling and said she had never been so excited after reading a submission. We went about trying to build a consensus but we did not have to try very hard. The manuscript swept through Knopf, through all the layers and every department. Never before had I gotten emails or phone calls saying things such as, “You must buy this book,” or “We have to publish this!” We met with the author and Ms. Danler was at least as impressive as her wonderful prose. Although there are obvious autobiographical elements in her first novel it was immediately clear that she had many more books in her ­ she was an author, not just someone who had written a terrific first novel. The thrill has continued every step of the way. The wild enthusiasm within the Knopf group turned into equally strong support from reviewers and bookstores and consumers. Right from the beginning, we thought that Stephanie Danler had written a novel that had a chance to become iconic, to really be that over-used clichĂ©: “the voice of a generation.” It is starting to look as if we all might be right. What did we see in this book from the moment the manuscript was submitted? We saw an elegant and eloquent use of language; the author’s descriptions of food made us hungry; her descriptions of sensual cravings stirred us; writing about the turmoil of being young brought us all back to our youth, or for those who were still young, it was like having their own lives being thrown back at them at the speed of light. The book made us all see ourselves in different ways, no matter our age or our sex. It also made us see outside of ourselves. It made us see the narrator’s very specific world as well as the world at large in new and startling ways. This is what talent does. This is what Sweetbitter is about to do to readers all over the world. Learn more about the book below!
Editor's Desk

From the Editor’s Desk: Jake Morrissey, Executive Editor, on Three-Martini Lunch by Suzanne Rindell

Editors get very passionate about books they work on – the Editor’s Desk series is his or her place to write in-depth about what makes a certain title special. Get the real inside-scoop on how books are shaped by the people who know them best. The best present an author can give an editor is the gift of surprise. Editors spend their days reading a lot of manuscripts that don’t tell them anything new. So reading a story about a world you thought you understood framed in an unexpected way that prompts you to think differently about it, that’s hitting the publishing jackpot. Which is what I did when Three-Martini Lunch came across my desk. In this terrific novel, Suzanne Rindell delves into a world I knew something about – book publishing – but sets her story in the late 1950s, which was when big changes were about to take place. I thought I had a decent grasp of the era. I’m familiar with two other iconic New York stories from around that time: Rona Jaffe’s classic novel (and eventual movie) The Best of Everything and the television show Mad Men. In both of those, New York City is portrayed as one of the places to be in the mid-20th century. If you know anything about either The Best of Everything or Mad Men – or even Alfred Hitchcock’s 1959 movie North by Northwest – you see a New York that’s sleeker, cleaner, less crowded than it is today. And the roles of men and women were as clearly defined then as their ambitions: Success for men meant career and advancement; success for women marriage and family. In Three-Martini Lunch, Suzanne Rindell peers beyond that mid-century mindset and explores the lives and worlds of Miles, Cliff and Eden, three young people struggling to gain a toehold in New York and hoping that publishing is the way to do that. The lives they lead are a far cry from the expense-account lunches and pristine suburban enclaves of the publishing elite. These young people are drawn to Greenwich Village and its emerging beatnik culture, with its dark and smoke-filled bars, jazz clubs, and poetry readings. And they struggle to stretch their meager bank balances by living in cramped, ramshackle apartments and having just enough money for food and beer but not always both. Suzanne gives her characters fascinating opportunities to pursue their individual ambitions and indulge their temptations. Even more compelling, she shows readers how the choices they make to achieve their goals changes them. I’m not giving anything away when I say that what you think of Miles, Cliff, and Eden at the beginning of Three-Martini Lunch will not be what you think of them at the end. As I followed the characters’ journeys through successive drafts of the novel, I found myself reassessing my own ideas about what was possible in publishing, in New York, and in America during that time. It was an era on the cusp of upheaval and turmoil, and it’s that change that Suzanne Rindell explores so effectively – and so surprisingly – in Three-Martini Lunch. Which is one of the highest compliments I can pay. Learn more about Three-Martini Lunch below!
Editor's Desk

An Essay from Carole Baron, editor of Green Island by Shawna Yang Ryan

Editors get very passionate about books they work on – the Editor’s Desk series is his or her place to write in-depth about what makes a certain title special. Get the real inside-scoop on how books are shaped by the people who know them best. Green Island arrived in an email on January 29th 2014—just over two years ago—along with the usual enthusiasm of an agent doing his job. It was one of six manuscripts waiting for me to read. It turned out to be the best birthday present ever. It was the end of January, and out of the blue I received a note from the agent extolling Green Island’s virtues. “Put in on the pile,” I said to myself. But something in the letter piqued my interest. Maybe the subject: Taiwan, otherwise known as “Formosa.” A place that I vaguely remembered from my history classes and from current events. Chiang Kai-shek, the ruler in exile from mainland China, run off by communists. Or maybe the fact that the author had published a book called Water Ghosts that came with exquisite reviews… But those two things that intrigued me could also be negatives: Would American readers care about Taiwan? It was also the author’s second novel, often a difficult sell to the booksellers. It would all depend on the writing, the story, the book. I printed it out and promised to read it within a week or two, but I couldn’t help taking a peek. I read a few of the opening pages and immediately put aside all my other work. I had to find out about the unnamed narrator, whose birth coincides with history being made with that famous day: February 28, 1947. I wanted to know more about her baba, who was one of many thousands who were disappeared by the KMT, and who eventually returns to his wife and children but discovers that survival comes at a cost. And I especially wanted to see how these issues followed the narrator as she journeys to America as a married woman. E.L. Doctorow once said that there is no difference between fiction and non-fiction, there’s only narrative. And Green Island is a perfect example of an excellent narrative that combines history that foreshadows current events with a family that you really care about, whose lives are entwined with the fate of their country. The writing took me into a world that I had no idea existed. It brought me into a period that I had only learned about in high school history and geography classes. Not since reading about the disappeared of Argentina have I been so drawn to the horrors of living in a place and time where one word spoken to the wrong person could result in death. Shawna received a Fulbright and used it to travel to Taiwan, where her mother had grown up, and became fluent in Mandarin to conduct research for this book. She uncovered the naked truth of how people had to live there for all those years under martial law, mostly unreported by the western press. But most importantly, she wrote a story of family, of love, of hard decisions, and of loyalty that simply tears your heart out. So I learned, I wept, and I couldn’t wait to speak to Shawna and find out more about her. I couldn’t wait to share this extraordinary book with others. Of course, as an editor, I had some comments: “Transitions need tweaking, some of the history could be clearer” But the emotional core the book was there, and Shawna was thoughtful, careful, and in command of her work. My assistant, Ruthie Reisner, and I worked with Shawna by email and dealt with complicated time difference between New York and Hawaii. Finally, there was a manuscript that we could share with the publishing world. The response has been extraordinary. From a rave blurb from Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of The Sympathizer (“a tough, unsentimental and moving novel that is a memorial not only to the heroes, but also to the survivors”), to excellent pre-reviews (“epic” —Kirkus, “engrossing… absorbing and affecting” —Booklist) to bookseller support that resulted in an Indie Next Pick to an Amazon Top 10 Book of the Month pick for February. In addition, our international sales team selected the novel for their first ever “global title wave” campaign. It is a stealth publication where the book itself is driving the enthusiasm and on February 23rd, it will be available for the world to read. I can’t wait. P.S. The finished copies just arrived at my desk. This is one of the best moments in an editor’s life, to see those manuscript pages in my inbox turn into a “real book.” Even more thrilling is to get this picture from a happy author. Learn more about Green Island here.
Editor's Desk

Deb Garrison, Senior Editor at Pantheon, on The Stargazer’s Sister by Carrie Brown

The Stargazer’s Sister, Carrie Brown’s novel based on the life of Caroline (Lina) Herschel, the sister of the great 19th century astronomer William Herschel, and a noted astronomer herself, is my third project with Carrie and the first time we’ve worked on a historical novel together. In many respects this felt different, because of Carrie’s desire to be loyal to a life about which there is much on record—Lina Herschel has been the subject of biographies, alongside her brother—and to the actual stargazing they conducted. Carrie’s acknowledgments include a professor of physics and graduate students in the field, who helped her understand the mathematics of the brother-sister duo and the skies they observed with revolutionary results. Their success was due to, among other factors, William’s single-minded passion to build a telescope bigger than seemed possible—a wonderful episode in the novel where we see how truly remarkable it is when science is in the making: there are people who think of things that no one has thought of before and find ways to carry out their vision, despite the skepticism that surrounds them. I was awed by the world Carrie made vivid to me and at the same time, a good litmus test for the casual reader who may not have any particular interest in chasing comets but who cares deeply about women’s lives. Carrie’s job was to be historically accurate but to also help us understand the wonder of who Lina was—to invent a voice for her, and to create living episodes for this budding feminist. Lina was a career woman so much before her time that it seems ludicrous to use the term; she had a vocation, and made major sacrifices for it. She also sacrificed much to be by her brother’s side, to run his household in Bath, cooking and cleaning and keeping accounts for a thriving scientific enterprise that took place quite literally in the siblings’ backyard. As Carrie shows us, Lina had an unwavering if complex loyalty to William, who saved her from a life of misery at the hands of her aging and unhappy mother in Hanover, Germany. Because Lina was scarred and her growth stunted by typhus in her youth, she was not suitable to be married off; William recognized Lina’s superior intellectual gifts, paying for the ongoing care of his mother in order to free Lina from imprisonment as her caretaker and drudge-mate forever. What ensues is that she became his own caretaker and drudge-mate, yet also the necessary enabler of his genius—one mathematically gifted enough to work out the calculations needed to record what he sees in the skies during their obsessive and sometimes bone-chilling nightly observations. In The Stargazer’s Sister, Carrie moves the reader with a grace and insight similar to that of her previous Pantheon titles, The Rope Walk, about a ten-year-old girl losing innocence and discovering adult fallibility, and The Last First Day, about the wife of a beloved prep school headmaster. Whether historical or not, her novels expose the tenderness and uncertainty of female strength as it comes into being. Her interest in the female psyche and how it develops, is revealed to its bearer, and is bodied forth in true acts in the world, hovers between the lines throughout her work. Without caring especially for what shines in the sky (though Carrie does beautifully with the vastness of heaven, its treasures suddenly near to the eye for the first time in history), a reader can be fully riveted by Lina’s story – that of a girl with a curious and potent brain becoming a woman by following her entirely unique path. I am delighted to read the excellent reviews so far for this winning novel! Learn more about the book below!
Editor's Desk

Ed Park, Executive Editor at Penguin Press, on The Portable Veblen by Elizabeth McKenzie

Ed Park, Executive Editor at Penguin Press, shares his insights into editing Elizabeth McKenzie’s new novel, The Portable Veblen, which went on sale Tuesday, January 19. Take it away, Ed! I joined Penguin Press in late 2014, and about two minutes later was sent Elizabeth McKenzie’s novel The Portable Veblen. The title made me smile, I remember, and every sentence that followed felt unbelievably fresh to me. It’s the story of a fraught engagement between seeming opposites: thirty-year-old Veblen, a down-to-earth office temp with a sideline in translating from the Norwegian, and Paul, an ambitious neurologist who’s being wooed by Big Pharma and the Department of Defense. Will they make it to the altar? Everything from the Palo Alto setting to the soulful squirrel that Veblen connects with (and Paul wouldn’t mind destroying) was at once strikingly original and true to life. EdParkVeblenJan2016 It’s been such a joy to watch the excitement build for this one-of-a-kind novel, with sales falling under its spell, and booksellers singing its praises. Along with being an IndieNext pick, Veblen has also received three starred pre-pub reviews and been selected by prominent indies for their signed first edition book clubs. Adam Kirsch’s early Veblen review in Slate took the thoughts right out of my head: “No matter how many novels you’ve read, it’s safe to say you’ve never read a novel like The Portable Veblen.” It’s true! Thinking about the list I’ve put together so far, I’m hoping something similar can be said for every title. For now, let’s begin with a young woman named after the economist Thorstein Veblen, and a very charismatic squirrel…
Editor's Desk

Andrea Walker, Executive Editor at Random House, on The Longest Night by Andria Williams

Editors get very passionate about books they work on – the Editor’s Desk series is his or her place to write in-depth about what makes a certain title special. Get the real inside-scoop on how books are shaped by the people who know them best.

Andria Williams’ debut novel The Longest Night is a book about many things—the Cold War, the American West, gender roles in the 1960s, the birth of nuclear power—but above all it is a portrait of a marriage and the forces that challenge it.  I was immediately drawn into the story by the opening scene of the novel—a man named Paul, racing through the night on a rural road, passing an ambulance and fire trucks that are rushing away from an accident that he is driving towards.  What is taking him there, compelling him to put himself in terrible danger?  Who is he trying to save?

Before we can get answers to this question the novel flashes back to a blindingly hot summer day, three years earlier.  A young family are driving cross-country from Virginia to Idaho Falls, where the husband, Paul, has been stationed for his next army tour.  They stop at a lake in northern Utah where local teenagers are diving from the rocks.  The wife, Nat, is desperate to cool off, and leaves her one and three year old daughters while she climbs to the top of the cliff and dives in, fully clothed.  When she emerges from the lake Paul is furious—embarrassed, ashamed, scared she could have hurt herself.  But as a reader, I was fascinated.  I wanted to know what Nat was looking for in that moment of freedom.  Did she just want to escape the demands of being a wife and mother for those brief seconds?  Did she want to show her husband that she was her own person, still?   Did she want to set an example of fearlessness for her daughters, or was she not thinking of them at all?

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When I describe Andria’s novel I often say that it reminds me of Revolutionary Road, if such a book were set in the American West.  That is to say—it is a story about frustrated ambition; domesticity; the stifling social norms of a small town, ruled by a cabal of wives who never fail to match the color of their centerpieces to the tablecloths.  Yet it is also a story about how love changes in a marriage—how it is shaped by distance and separation; the birth of children; by our challenges in reconciling our adult selves with our adolescent ones.  It is a story rooted in a uniquely specific time and place, that is utterly universal in its implications.  I hope you will enjoy reading it.

Read more about the book here.

Editor's Desk

Celebrating the 40th Anniversary of Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry

We’re celebrating the 40th anniversary of Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry with a beautiful new edition of the book, out now. Regina Hayes, Editor at Large of Viking Young Readers, wrote this letter to commemorate the day.

It is hard to believe that forty years have passed since the publication of Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry.  It seems like only yesterday that I met Mildred Taylor, when the manuscript that became her first book about the Logan family, Song of the Trees, won a contest sponsored by the Council on Interracial Books.  Mildred was interviewing the editors who had expressed interest in her manuscript, and she came to our offices at Dial, a beautiful, shy, but very composed young African-American woman. Much to my delight, she chose Dial as her publisher, and I became her editor.

After working with her on the first book, I knew Ms. Taylor had enormous talent, but I was still stunned when the manuscript for Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry arrived: a hugely accomplished, compelling, full-fledged novel with an unforgettable cast of characters. Reading it, I had shivers up my spine.  Could it really be as good as I thought it was? But subsequent readers confirmed my judgment.  There was such excitement in the office around publication. We firmly believed that this was an important book, and our faith was justified when the Newbery committee chose Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry as the most distinguished contribution to literature for children that year. Today. generations of readers have agreed as they embraced the Logan family saga.

To celebrate the occasion, the wonderfully talented and award-winning Kadir Nelson has agreed to create new covers, not only for Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, but for all nine of Mildred Taylor’s books about the Logan family, which will be reissued throughout the year. Mr. Nelson’s work has been featured in numerous different outlets, including The New Yorker, a United States postage stamp, a Michael Jackson album cover, and numerous award-winning children’s books, and his rich, inviting paintings are the perfect complement to Mildred Taylor’s heartfelt stories.

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And something more to look forward to:  2017 will see publication of the final book in the saga of the Logans, which follows Cassie Logan through the years after World War II,  as she attends law school and becomes involved in the momentous years of the early civil rights movement.

I hope you will join all of us at Penguin Young Readers in the year-long celebration of a ground-breaking writer, her memorable, moving books, and forty years of courage, love, and pride.

With best wishes,

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Editor's Desk

VP and Editor in Chief, Andy Ward, on Shame and Wonder by David Searcy

The origin story of Shame and Wonder, as brief as I can make it: I was sitting at my desk, four years ago, when my phone rang. It was the writer John Jeremiah Sullivan calling. “This is going to sound weird,” he said, “but I did a reading in Texas last night, and I met a guy there. He handed me a copy of an essay he’d written. I think it might be good. Can I send it to you?” This happens a lot, when you’re an editor, people sending you “good” things to read, and the track record isn’t great. But the essay John sent me that day – five typewritten, hand-corrected pages from a guy in Dallas named David Searcy, who’d only started writing nonfiction in his late sixties – was unlike anything I’d read before. An hour later, I was on the phone with David Searcy. A month later, we had a book deal. Four years later, we have Shame and Wonder. But my love for this book goes beyond its unusual beginnings. I love it for the beauty and strangeness of David’s sentences: “I can remember being a child and being blank. Without opinion. Walking around like that. Complete like that. All fear and desire with not much in between. I think of it now as an experimental setup. Like a cloud chamber – where you’ve got this otherwise empty vessel filled with a sort of mist through which events, the passage of subatomic particles, leave evanescent trails.” I love it because of the feelings of deep longing he is able to conjure in, say, a pair of initials (“little heart-shaped memories of love”) carved into the trunk of an old tree or, even, the prizes at the bottom of cereal boxes. I love it, too, because it is funny. But maybe most special of all, in the end, was being a witness to David’s process, which is not exactly typical, and to be honest, probably not advisable. Below, how a David Searcy essay – this one, titled “How to Color the Grass” — comes to be: David writes on yellow legal pads, in long hand, with a ball point pen. Here’s what his first draft looks like. (Two ways to look at this, as an editor: Fascinating or stressful.) Untitled Here’s what his second or third draft looks like, i.e. when clarity begins to assert itself: Untitled2 And here’s what happens when he puts his pen down and commits to a final draft, which he commemorates via a Swiss-made Hermes 3000 typewriter, circa l959, with standard serif pica font. As David says, “It’s like typing on a Steinway – just the right mechanical resistance to make you mean what you say.” Untitled3.   Finally, David also takes photos of the things he writes about, and several of these photos appear in the book. Think W.G. Sebald… if W.G. Sebald lived in Dallas… and drove a truck… and said things like “holy crap”… and spent a lot of time thinking about the venality of Scrooge McDuck. Though I love the title, the overall effect is: no shame, all wonder. Untitled4 Find out more about Shame and Wonder here:
Editor's Desk

Executive Editor, Lucia Watson, on Cooking for Life by Ann Ogden Gaffney

Editors get very passionate about books they work on – the Editor’s Desk series is his or her place to write in-depth about what makes a certain title special. Get the real inside-scoop on how books are shaped by the people who know them best.   At the heart of every good cookbook is a compelling story. When I got the proposal for this cookbook, I was utterly moved by Ann Ogden Gaffney’s story of turning her own experience with cancer into a mission that has helped so many others. Ann had a glamorous career in fashion when she was diagnosed with cancer the first time in 2001. She says she was lucky that time—she had surgery to remove her kidney, and then she was quickly back traveling the world. But when she was diagnosed with breast cancer several years later her, it was a much different story. She couldn’t travel and she was bald. She took a hiatus from work to give herself the time to get through treatment. It turned out to be a decision that would change her life. As a passionate home cook, Ann found that she could cope with her symptoms by listening to what her body needed and craved. As she became immersed in the world of hospitals, she realized that she could use her skills to help other patients cope in the same way, teaching them and their loved ones how to make good food that would bring comfort and nourishment as they dealt with illness. Ann started offering advice, then recipes, and then began organizing free classes. When her own treatment was over, she discovered she had no interest in going back to client meetings to discuss the new trends in colors or skirt lengths that season. Her heart was still back in the cancer suite. In 2007, she founded Cook for Your Life which has gone from a one-woman show to a leading nonprofit that serves patients all over the tri-state area and all over the country through their popular interactive website. When I talked to Ann for the first time about this cookbook, I was struck by her spirit and fabulous sense of humor. And I heard her determination to create a cookbook that really addressed the unique challenges that cancer patients face head on. She told me that there was no other cancer cookbook out there that approached cooking the way that she wanted to. Some doctors give advice on nutrition (many don’t). But no one tells you how to implement that advice and how to cook as your cravings, taste buds, and energy levels change dramatically during treatment. What people need are simple recipes with short ingredient lists that deliver and that really satisfy. Ann’s strong vision for the book also included its design. She felt strongly that it should look rich and beautiful, not clinical. And I agreed wholeheartedly. After all, just because someone is sick, it doesn’t mean that they lose their sense of pleasure. And as Ann understands, a sense of pleasure is vital to feeling human, something so important when dealing with disease. We were lucky to have Ann’s husband Joe Gaffney, a renowned photographer, on board to shoot the food photos and the results are stunning. And the recipes are terrific. I cook out of the book quite a bit for my own family—Ann developed the recipes with cancer patients in mind, but it’s the kind of simple, good, soulful food that everyone loves. I’m proud to be working with Ann to bring her story and message to so many who need it. It’s a cookbook that is as much about the healing power of food as it is about keeping a sense of self while going through the frightening and overwhelming process of treating disease. I think it will be a classic for many, many years to come. Read more about the book here.
Editor's Desk

Tarcher Perigee Editorial Director Marian Lizzi on All the Words Are Yours by Tyler Knott Gregson

Editors get very passionate about books they work on – the Editor’s Desk series is his or her place to write in-depth about what makes a certain title special. Get the real inside-scoop on how books are shaped by the people who know them best. Like every editor, I learn a great deal from the books I work on. Over the past twenty-plus years, I’ve enjoyed the best continuing education course I can imagine – gleaning practical takeaways and new insights on everything from why we have eight senses, not five, and how our brains are literally wired for creativity, to how to escape a locked car trunk, the secret to translating The Simpsons into Finnish, and colorful details about the bon vivant who invented the cocktail. I can happily prattle on about research that’s found cheese to be more addictive than cigarettes, why cirrus clouds look wispy, and how algorithms actually work (ideally there won’t be any follow-up questions). But every once in a while, a book teaches me something different—something deeper. When I first learned that I would be inheriting a volume of heartfelt haiku paired with the author’s textured and intimate photographs, and editing it from the ground up, I knew that it too would be a learning experience. After all, I’d never edited a collection of poems, and with the exception of those posters in the subway, my regular exposure to poetry is more than a bit lacking. What I didn’t expect is that the author’s words and images, and the process of immersing myself in them, would touch me so deeply, and open a window onto a new way of seeing the world. It’s fair to say that Tyler Knott Gregson is a new breed of poet. Based in Montana, he’s a wedding photographer by day, a practicing Buddhist–oh, and an internet sensation. His first book, Chasers of the Light, was a national bestseller right out of the gate. His many loyal fans, hundreds of thousands in number and growing fast, follow him on Tumblr and Instagram for a daily fix of his poems composed on a vintage typewriter or hand-written on found scraps of paper. They’ve come to adore his beautifully honest, intimate words and his lush photographs that capture the fleeting moods and moments of everyday life. Reading Tyler’s poems is a disarming experience. Very quickly, you begin to feel your defenses soften. That filter of skepticism we all have begins to fade. Suddenly you’re in the hands of a writer who’s willing to lay himself bare, tuning in to his feelings of longing, passion, loss, and hope, and sharing them on the page. Before you’ve had a chance to resist, he’s pulled you into his world. From day one as Tyler’s editor, I was struck by his sincerity and purity of vision. This isn’t a flash-in-the-pan–a cynical internet celebrity making memes in his basement, or trading on his celebrity or good looks to rack up followers (did I mention he’s also incredibly handsome?). This is a generous and thoughtful writer who’s brave enough to reveal himself, in words and images, every single day. Working with Tyler on the selection and order of the poems, I had the pleasure of immersing myself in his work, experiencing up close his rare gift for observing the miraculous in the mundane, and his unique ability to put his emotions into words and images, without filtering or censoring—and without rushing past the moment in a mad dash to get more things done. While the experience moved me greatly, the editing process was also a bit unusual. Typically I connect with my authors’ words while sitting at a computer, communicating in tracked changes and comments in the margins. But not this time. Working with color print-outs of each photograph and poem, I spread them out on the biggest conference-room table I could find, and I began to physically move them around. All the Words Seeing the book laid out this way brought me even deeper into the material–and was a lot of fun. By the end of the process, I knew we had a book that effectively draws readers into Tyler’s world, one moment at a time. As the book hits stores, I’ll go back to my hurried ways, and my mad dash to collect facts and insights and cocktail party topics will continue apace. But I’ll try to hold on to that sense of wonder, and to find the courage to open my eyes just a little bit to the mystery and beauty all around us. And I’ll look forward to working with Tyler on his third collection, coming out a year from now—another chance to learn, grow, and be inspired by an author who has the courage to share his true voice on every page. Read more about All the Words Are Yours here.Â