December 2023: Q&A with Amy Einhorn, fiction publisher of Crown Books
Writing and reading in an unpredictable world.
Dear Writers,
It’s December. That means gift-giving, candle-lighting, short days, long nights, Chanukah, Christmas, Kwanza, and New Year’s resolutions. This year, it’s hard to get giddy over holiday celebrations given the war in Israel and Gaza, the surge in antisemitism, Islamophobia, college campus chaos, polarizing politics, and the ongoing themes of loneliness, misogyny, homophobia, racism, transphobia and ageism. But our job as writers is to find ways to write our way through this. Yesterday, I reread the opening pages of Beyond That, the Sea so I could revel in the rhythm of this mouth-watering scene:
Spence-Ash’s writing made me want to revise the opening paragraph of this newsletter—and in the 20 minutes it took, my mood surged from 0 to 60. Writing restores our sense of peace and purpose.
Amy Einhorn is the new publisher of Crown Fiction and we have a great Q&A with her.
You just started a new job as senior VP and publisher of Crown Fiction on October 2. What have you spent the past few weeks doing?
READING! Lots and lots of reading. And also learning all of the new systems so a ton of training sessions, which sounds horrible and it is.
In other jobs, you published Liane Moriarty's Big Little Lies, Min Jin Lee's Free Food for Millionaires, Laurie Frankel’s This Is How It Always Is, Chris Whitaker’s We Begin at the End, and Jeanine Cummins’ American Dirt, among other great books. What kind of fiction are you looking to publish at Crown?
Crown has a long history of doing fiction – they were the publisher of Gillian Flynn as well as the publisher who made Sally Rooney so big with CONVERSATIONS WITH FRIENDS and NORMAL PEOPLE. So we’re not starting from scratch. That said it’s exciting to be at the helm as we begin this new chapter. The Crown list will be a highly curated list of books that span from literary to commercial, as well as the intersection of literary and commercial. They might vary wildly but what they will have in common is that they are going to be the best of their kind.
You’ve been at Macmillan's Flatiron Books division, Penguin Random House, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Grand Central Publishing, and Poseidon Press. Now you are back at Penguin Random House. How, if at all, is it different this time?
Ask me this question in a few months!
What are you reading for work now?
I’m just finishing an edit on an amazing novel I just bought, DEEP CUTS by Holly Brickley that hopefully you’ll all be hearing about in 2025, and am then going to start editing a new novel by Shobha Rao.
What is the first book you are publishing at Crown? How did you find this author?
Our first title will be ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK by Chris Whitaker. I published Chris’ last book, WE BEGIN AT THE END, which was a NYT bestseller. I was sent his book by his UK publisher and bought the rights from them.
What books are you publishing in 2024 that you are excited about?
ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK by Chris Whitaker
THINGS DON’T BREAK ON THEIR OWN by Sarah Easter Collins, an amazing debut.
A new novel by Liane Moriarty.
Are you publishing short story collections as well as novels?
Short stories are my Achilles heel—I grew up on Raymond Carver, Grace Paley, William Carlos Williams, and actually I loved Hemingway’s short stories much more than his novels. Like many creative writing/English majors, I love short stories.. But they’re incredibly hard to publish these days– but if the right one comes along absolutely yes.
Where do you most of your reading? (Desk at work, bed at home, subway, etc.)
Subway, home, car, train, airplane.
What are you reading for fun now?
A sad but true fact is I only read for fun when on vacation.
What novels, memoirs, stories or essays have you read recently that have inspired you?
In no particular order, I loved: TOMORROW AND TOMORROW AND TOMORROW, NOTHING TO SEE HERE, LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY
Do you read actual books, read on Kindle, listen on Audible, borrow from library?
For work I read on my kindle, for pleasure I read physical books.
Write Night, Thursday, December 7, 6-7 p.m. It’s free and it’s live! Writers can read two pages of their work (500 words, max) out loud.
Maestro: Fabulous film about conductor/composer Leonard Bernstein (Bradley Cooper) and his complicated marriage to Felicia Montealegre Cohn (Carey Mulligan). One of the best lines is spoken by comic Sarah Silverman, who plays Bernstein’s sister, Shirley: “There is a price for being in my brother’s orbit, you know that.” Carey Mulligan is extraordinary; watching her pay that price is exhilarating and devastating. Bonus: Bradley Cooper: Conducting Is the “Scariest Thing I’ve Ever Done:”
May December: Unsettling film about Gracie, a 30something married mother (Julianne Moore) who seduces Joe, a seventh grader (Charles Melton), gets pregnant, goes to prison, marries him and has more kids with him. Natalie Portman plays actress Elizabeth, who plays Gracie in a movie of the couple’s life. Moore and Portman’s characters pretend to be kind and considerate as they manipulate everyone in sight. Love isn’t always love; sometimes it’s sick. You may be tempted to yell, “Run, Joey, run!”
Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé: Let’s go see it!
Laura Weiss, Healthy Smiles (Five on the Fifth)
Amy Bloom, Silver Water (fiction)
Yiyun Li, How to Raise a Warrior Queen (nonfiction, NYT)
Alex Perez, The Fight for the Future of Publishing (The Free Press)