Writing and Publishing "Difficult" Books
104 South Fifth Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106
ACCESSIBILITY
Upon entering, visitors will descend a flight of stairs to reach the elevator to the event on the second floor. Please contact Allison Cadle at [email protected] for more information.
This event is free to attend, but registration is required.
Join the APS Press and guests for a panel discussion, refreshments, networking, and book sales!
What makes a book "difficult" and how do those in the publishing business handle it? Writing and publishing involve all kinds of struggles. Books can be emotionally and intellectually challenging for writers and readers, and there are extra difficulties when it comes to selling books to people who are becoming less inclined to read books at all. Let's talk about it with a panel full of experience from the perspectives of writing, editing, agenting, and reading.
Head House Books will be on site to sell you the latest titles from our panelists.
Doors open at 5:15, and the panel discussion will start around 5:45. There will be time for audience questions, so bring yours! All are welcome.
The event is free to attend, but registration is required. Upon registering for the event, your email address will be added to a mailing list for news about future publishing salons.
Salons are held in person every other month on a variety of topics related to the publishing industry. Please contact Allison Cadle at [email protected] with questions.
PANELISTS
Alia Hanna Habib is a Vice President and literary agent at The Gernert Company, where she represents MacArthur Fellows, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists, National Book Award finalists, and numerous New York Times bestselling authors. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.
Laura B. McGrath is an Assistant Professor of English at Temple University, working on contemporary American literature and the publishing industry. Prior to joining the faculty at Temple, she was the Associate Director of the Literary Lab at Stanford University. A former Kennedy Fellow with the Smithsonian Institute of American History, her award-winning work has been supported by the NEH, the Mellon Foundation, ACLS, and the Big Ten. She is the author of Middlemen: Literary Agents and the Making of American Fiction. Her writing on books and the publishing industry has appeared in The Atlantic, The Nation, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and Public Books.
Partly Strong, Partly Broken is Nathaniel Popkin’s fourth novel and eighth book. He is also the co-editor of the anthology Who Will Speak for America? In the novels The Year of the Return and Everything Is Borrowed and in the book-length essay To Reach the Spring, Popkin examines intersections of Jewish ideals and lived realities. Popkin is a writer and producer of history documentary films, the co-founder of the website and public history and journalism project Hidden City, and formerly a writer of criticism for the Wall Street Journal, Kenyon Review, Public Books, and Cleaver Magazine, among other publications. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Tablet, and Gulf Coast.
Declan Spring is Vice President and Senior Editor at New Directions. He has been working there since 1991 and has edited books by Anne Carson, Inger Christensen, Jenny Erpenbeck, Forrest Gander, Laszlo Krasznahorkai, Fernando Pessoa, Dag Solstad, and Enrique Vila-Matas.