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Getting Inside the Head of a Book Editor

February 8, 2019 By meerasub Leave a Comment

Want to write a book? I moderated a panel at the SEJ conference in Flint, Michigan in October with three wonderful book editors. Here’s a recap, as it was printed in SEJ Journal.

By Meera Subramanian

EDITOR’S NOTE: If you don’t often get to the Society of Environmental Journalists’ annual conferences, you may be missing out on the signature SEJ “book pitch slams,” where attendees offer their ideas for a book to a panel of book editors for feedback in an open session. For reasons of privacy, these sessions are not recorded and are not available online. So SEJournal’s Karen Schaefer asked SEJ board member and book author Meera Subramanian to share some of what she learned from pitch slam editors at the most recent conference.

Attendee at the 2018 annual SEJ conference, where prospective authors received advice from book editors. Photo: SEJ. Click to enlarge.

True to tradition, the final session on the final day of the Society of Environmental Journalists’ annual conference in Flint, Mich last Oct. 3-7 was the “Book Slam.”

Set up in an elegant room at the Flint Institute of Arts in Flint, Michigan, participants stepped up to the microphone to pitch their book ideas in a mere 120 seconds.

Then three editors — Paula Ayer of Greystone Press, Scott Gast of University of Chicago Press and Emily Turner of Island Press — provided thoughtful and encouraging feedback.

Given the cloak of secrecy around members’ works-in-progress, only those present could witness the idea development in process.

But the editors did kick off the session by sharing some universalities that they wished every aspiring author knew before they ever approached a publishing house.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: writing tips Tagged With: conference, editor, SEJ, writing tips

to be a human body, in flint, mi

October 10, 2018 By meerasub Leave a Comment

We have a ten-minute break from talking about #climatechange at the #SEJ2018 conference in Flint, MI, and I walk outside seeking air. I find a heavy police presence, notice the Flint River is right there, wander over. See cops on the water’s edge, along with a scuba diver gearing up. I ask an older black man on my right what happened. He says a man drowned a few days ago and they’re looking for the body. A younger white man, tattoos on his neck, comes up on my left, and I ask him, too.

“It was my friend. Tripping on acid the other night and he thought he could walk on water.”

Oh.

He’d been walking on some object that was floating, and then he slipped in. Couldn’t get out. Vanished below the water.

“I’m sorry,” I say. He’s stoic.

“Just another one down in Flint,” he says.

“Why?” I ask him.

“I dunno, drugs,” he says, shrugs. I’m silent.

“I’m sorry about your friend,” I say again, putting my hand on his arm. I’m utterly lacking. He says thanks.

Back in I go to the old building that was once a Sheraton and now is a conference center just this side of shabby to talk about carbon and climate and journalism in a windowless room. A couple hours later I go back out. I take a photo of the river, lazy & brown, framed by trees whose leaves are blushing red. I leave out of the frame the medical examiner, bent over the body of the 32-year old man who, the tattooed man had told me, left behind a twin brother. Somewhere, the twin that remains is walking through the city, solo for the first time since the moment of conception. 

Filed Under: just another day, travels Tagged With: conference, death, drugs, Flint, Michigan, river, SEJ, walking on water

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