In this two-part panel, three editors discussed careers in publishing and best strategies for getting your work into print. Professor of American Studies and Urban Studies Samuel Zipp moderated the conversation between Timothy Bartlett ’90, executive editor at St. Martin’s Press; Susan Ferber ’93, executive editor for American and world history at Oxford University Press; and John Palattella, an editor for the print and digital magazine The Point who previously served as poetry and literary editor for The Nation.
Speakers
Tim Bartlett ’90 is executive editor at St. Martin’s Press, where he acquires in a range of fields including narrative nonfiction, history, current affairs, memoir, and idea-driven business. He worked previously at Basic Books, the Random House imprint of Penguin Random House, and Oxford University Press. He has, over the course of his career, specialized in helping academics write for a general audience. He graduated from Brown University with a concentration in history.
Susan Ferber ’93 is an executive editor for American and World history at Oxford University Press USA. Her list ranges from ancient to contemporary history and includes both academic and trade titles. Books she has edited have been national bestsellers and won numerous prizes, including the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, the Bancroft Prize, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Since 2005, she has taught at the Columbia Publishing Course in New York and Oxford. While at Brown University, she designed an independent concentration in Victorian and Edwardian Studies and took a leave of absence to study at St. Hugh’s College, Oxford.
John Palattella is an editor at The Point, a print and digital magazine of philosophical writing. He has been an editor at Lingua Franca, the Columbia Journalism Review, and The Nation, where he served as poetry editor for two years and then as literary editor for nine. He has written for The Boston Review, the London Review of Books, the New York Review of Books, The Point, and Wespennest (Austria), among others. He co-edited Into the Abyss: An Oral History of Reporting from Iraq, 2003–2006 (Melville House, 2007), and has contributed poems to Raritan. He earned a Ph.D. in English and American literature from the University of Rochester.
Presented by the Cogut Institute for the Humanities and the Department of History.