Latest news with #SuchaFunAge
The Guardian
19-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Novelist Kiley Reid: ‘Consumption cannot fix racism'
When Arizona-raised novelist Kiley Reid, 37, debuted five years ago with Such a Fun Age, she attained the kind of commercial and critical success that can jinx a second book, even landing a spot on the 2020 Booker longlist. Instead, Come and Get It – which is published in paperback next month – fulfils the promise, pursuing some of the themes of that first work while also daring to be boldly different. The story unfolds at the University of Arkansas, where wealth, class and race shape the yearnings and anxieties of a group of students and one equally flawed visiting professor. Reid, who has been teaching at the University of Michigan, is currently preparing to move to the Netherlands with her husband and young daughter. She is also on the judging panel for this year's Booker prize. What inspired Come and Get It?I was teaching an undergraduate fiction writing workshop and was intrigued by my students. They were smart and bizarre and strange, and their voices got stuck in my head. Around that time, my husband gifted me a book called Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality, written by two sociologists who lived on a university campus and tracked young women's finances. I'm fascinated by money and began interviewing students about it, and that's how the novel started. Money also features powerfully in Such a Fun Age, even though that novel was discussed almost exclusively in terms of race, right?Such a Fun Age came out on the last day of 2019, and the following summer George Floyd was murdered. I think a lot of black artists had to contend with the role of their work in the hands of people who believed that if they purchased black art they were solving a bit of racism. The truth is, to separate race from money is to miss the point entirely. The reason that the median income of black families is so low is due to slavery. I will continue to believe that consumption cannot fix racism, but in terms of what my books are doing, that's always up to the reader. Is a novel's theme something you consider as you're writing?Theme always comes last. I never say, I want to write about capitalism or women. What gets me into writing is always this tiny moment of someone saying something that's stuck with me. I also hate polemics within a book. I just want a novel to present fiction as truth to me, and then let me make up my own mind, because life is so complicated. If theme comes last, what comes first?For me, it's always story. When friends recommend books and say the first 50 pages are really boring but then it gets good, I say absolutely not! You have to grab me with a story, that's the only reason I pick up a book. I think it's story followed by character and then voice. You capture your characters' voices so clearly in Come and Get It, the tone almost becomes documentary-like. Did anything that students told you when you interviewed them make it on to the page?A young woman told me that she received paycheques through her father's dentist's office, and I asked her if she worked there and she said no, they're 'practice paycheques'. I said, you know that sounds like fraud? And she was like, 'Oh no, it's totally fine.' That went straight into the book – Practice Paycheques was almost its title. I use things that I hear in the real world in my fiction all the time. It's all up for grabs as far as I'm concerned. You have a gift for finding redeeming traits in characters that it might be tempting to villainise…I hope that I'm generous towards my characters. My favourite kind of heartbreak within a novel is when you know a character knows better. I love characters who you feel like shaking a bit because that rings very true to real life for me. How are you feeling about writing your third book in the Netherlands, immersed in a language other than English?I have to learn Dutch very quickly! Studying other languages is really beneficial for me. When I was writing Such a Fun Age, I took a German class four days a week and honestly, it was good practice to be bad at something first thing in the morning. When I got to my own writing later on, I wasn't making the first mistakes of my day, which took the pressure way down. Talking of pressure, how long is your reading list for the Booker prize?About 160 novels. I allow myself to be very messy with my notes but there's no scope for falling behind with the reading. I try to tackle two books in a day and almost make them compete against each other, spending an hour with one, then an hour with another… It's pretty illuminating in terms of which one is really holding my attention. Tell me about the group dynamic on the judging group is absolutely lovely [the other Booker panellists for 2025 are chair Roddy Doyle, Ayòbámi Adébáyò, Sarah Jessica Parker and Chris Power] and I'm the grouch, I have no generosity. It's difficult because some of the books have completely knocked me off my seat so I have a very high bar. Do you have a favourite winner from years past?I, like most people, enjoyed Paul Beatty's The Sellout [2016] very much, and I loved This Other Eden by Paul Harding, which was shortlisted [in 2023]. In your wider reading, is there an author you return to time and again?James Baldwin. On my desk are copies of The Fire Next Time, Notes of a Native Son, and Another Country. From voice to architecture of thought, he's just compelling all round. I did a monologue from Blues for Mister Charlie for an acting class aged 19. I don't imagine my performance was very compelling at all, but it was how I discovered James Baldwin. Did you grow up wanting to be a writer?Cleaning out my childhood bedroom, I found a list from when I was around 10 of things I would like to do before I was 40, and alongside 'kiss a boy at a football game' was 'publish a book'. I'm happy to say that I've done a few of the other ones as well. Is there anything on your bookshelves that readers would be surprised to find?Ginger tea and a ton of index cards. Probably a third of Come and Get It started out on index cards. On days when it seems like there's not enough time or possibly inspiration, it's way less pressure to say I'm going to write six index cards today, that's it. Come and Get It by Kiley Reid is published in paperback by Bloomsbury (£9.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at Delivery charges may apply
New York Times
07-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
She Brings Diverse Voices to Book Publishing
When Sally Kim started in the publishing industry more than 30 years ago, in her experience, 'only editors could sit at the table,' she said. 'The assistants would stand behind them, listening.' 'I remember pitching a book I wanted to buy in a meeting where I wasn't allowed to speak,' she said. 'I was too junior. They were doing me a favor.' Ms. Kim isn't silent anymore. Nor is she standing behind anyone. Her seat is at the head of the table, as president and publisher of Little, Brown and Company, one of the oldest publishers in the United States, which consists of six imprints and falls under the Hachette Book Group umbrella. A Korean American whose parents immigrated to the United States, Ms. Kim is the company's first Asian American woman to hold that position. Previously, she was senior vice president and publisher at G.P. Putnam's Sons. She said she had spent the past year at Little, Brown and Company inviting everyone, regardless of their position, to pull up a chair and find a seat at the table. 'Giving everyone a voice is a priority,' Ms. Kim, 51, said, 'so is reading projects together, weighing in and sharing their perspectives.' Ms. Kim grew up in Los Angeles. She now lives with her husband and two children, 12 and 14, in Westchester County, N.Y. During her career, she has acquired more than 100 books, including Kiley Reid's 'Such a Fun Age,' Robert Jones Jr.'s 'The Prophets,' and Gillian Flynn's 'Sharp Objects.' This interview, done in person at Hachette's office in Midtown Manhattan, has been edited and condensed. What is it like to be the first Asian American woman president and publisher at Hachette? Ten years ago, they never would have hired someone like me for this position. Coming up in publishing, I had no one who looked like me, especially in editorial. I didn't use that as a discouragement. I had to make my own reality. I'm now approaching this job as a huge right, and it colors everything I do, and every decision I make, and every person I hire. I spent my early years trying to conform, to play by the rules or make up for what I felt was lacking in my background, connections and education. I realize I cannot extract my identity and my Asian Americanness. What have you learned about yourself over the past year as president? That not fitting the mold and being a woman of color are my greatest assets. I learned I'm cut out for this job. I've learned to embrace my unique perspective because that's how I make change visible in what I do. What are some specific examples of changes you've implemented? I canceled our big standing acquisitions meetings, along with other reports and forms, as they didn't serve our purpose of connecting more books to readers. Marketing and publicity directors came to editorial meetings, which before were only editorial. I hired 24 new people, which is reflected in every different department including art, marketing, publicity and editorial. Meetings are now structured so everybody gets a turn to speak. We're buying more books as paperbacks to make them more affordable to readers. What results are you seeing from the changes you've implemented? Because we are a year or two out in terms of bringing a book to a reader, those results aren't available yet. But the changes I've made have shifted the culture, the energy and vibrancy here. We're starting to see the new DNA reflected in the people who are here and in the lists we are building. We're buying new books with diverse voices in different categories. Our covers, copy and the way we market, even talk about our books, have changed. How are you investing in diversification? My commitment to diversity is not just about race, it's about class and subjects of genres. And whom we hire, which are editors from diverse backgrounds like Nadxieli Nieto, who is the editorial director at Algonquin. Her mission is to lift up undiscovered voices who were being ignored — Southern voices, Latinx and writers of color, different forms of identity and orientation. How will you guide the next generation of women entering publishing? By helping them identify who they are, the space they want to create, and helping them see their diversity as an asset. By encouraging people to use their uniqueness as their superpower, and helping them find what their superpower is. That was not the message I got in publishing. It was all about conforming. Having people see an Asian woman in this position, especially since I didn't see any people who looked like me, is helping other people realize they can achieve this, too. I'm also teaching them how to be a good editor and how to think like a publisher. And by giving people, especially other women, positions of power and the opportunity to buy books that they believe in, that will amplify underrepresented voices and authors.
