Ahh thank you Cassie!! Honored to be an exception to this rule lol (<3). Even as someone who lives here and went to school here, the secret handshake business model of publishing is exhausting, so I'm with you.
I also just love the way you move in publishing. I'm sure for you your career took a long time, but to someone like me, it makes things look so much more possible through doing the work and publishing great things.
I LOVE THIS — and I am someone who has lived in NYC for almost a decade.
Everything you say here is spot fucking on. Where people went to undergrad (NYU, Columbia), if they did MFAs at those same universities, did the author have media jobs that put them in those book party rooms — these things matter, and they make an enormous difference. Because the spaces that some authors write about, that a lot of industry folks, then, disproportionately "connect" with are also very White and Classed spaces. Much like big four publishing itself.
To me, there is a huge distinction between authors who are (not generationally wealthy) native New Yorkers and those who moved here however long ago and have just made the city their personality. (Your line about wearing the dress - yes.) It's rare work like Lilly Dancyger's that is the standout, and I can't help but come back to the Class of it all. Lilly documents the city like it's a family member that you love but that fucks you over (but that you still love); her work talks about displacement due to gentrification, and the kind of themes you see on the margins that you rarely see in that Literary It Girl novel, but that are the experience of so, so many people here.
Sorry, this comment ran long. But something that continues to burn in my brain year in and year out is the stratospheric wealth gaps in NYC. I grew up working class in the rural Midwest; I have also lived in Minneapolis and Boston. But I've *never* lived around the kind of wealth that so casually exists here. It's wild. Which is to say, writers who were educated in, or who come from, and who consequently have access to those circles have such a leg up. *shrug* Anyway, it's something that folks considering a move here should keep in mind. If writers want to move here for industry reasons and specifically to build those kinds of connections, it's work, and it takes years, but it will absolutely help your career. But I would never suggest that someone move here to "be a writer." You can, truly, write anywhere.
You're so smart. I always love what you have to say. You're so write about Lilly too--I am engrossed in First Love because of that yearning dripping from her pages, which is something so earnest about teenagedom (and friendship--the complicated balance of trying to maintain them as we grow and shapeshift), and it's also so true that her New York is not the New York of tv or ivy leagues. The Class IS the thing--I would actually read a ton more books about New York City if they didn't feel all the same sub-culture.
I'm REALLY interested in this idea of wealth existing so casually because it's so different (in my mind?) to the wealth where I am in North Carolina which feels the opposite of casual. And then how we portray both in literature--which is often that there's no wealth or the wealth is far away (across town / in another area) in the south and where the opposite is probably true for you where the the pot is actually melting. It's such a different existence. (This also reminds me of that guy on TikTok that's always asking to see people's apartments and even though I know they're pre-planned probably, I'm still always amazed and how WILD those apartments are in comparison to anything I've ever seen in real life).
This is so, so refreshing. As someone who writes from the interior West (Colorado, Arizona, Wyoming, New Mexico) this is a particular pet peeve of mine. My next book is about sex, singleness, and desire, and the bulk of what exists as potential comp titles are telling New York stories (and if not NYC, San Fran). It was perplexing to me writing the original book proposal (I'm on to a new version now) whether what I saw as a selling point--relationship stories from small understated cities and gritty rural areas! new! different!--would actually lead to the proposal's "unrelatability," that dreaded "couldn't connect" response.
Sensuality is about sensation--how the air moves, how the seasons unfold, which blossoms are popping, which natural disasters leave places and lives in what kind of rubble--and so to me a book about sex is necessarily a book about place. And of course how we meet people and what options we see ourselves having depends on how we CAN meet people and how many people there are to meet and what type of person they are. We can't learn what we need to about human sexuality and desire by only looking at NYC. There are so many other beautiful spells to cast, from other places... And yet the bulk of books I found are excessively thinky (often weirdly disembodied for being about sex) and unfold in dense manmade environments.
well, if just this comment is any indication, I can't wait to read this book. SENSUAL! SPELLS TO CAST! ARE MOVEMENT! I love everything you're saying here. Get me a galley when the time comes! (Also, Margo Steines talks so highly of you that I feel like we're two degrees of separation away from being friends!)
We ARE practically friends! I have heard such wonderful things about your work too and was distressed to realize I'd overlooked your Substack for so long.
Thanks for this Cassie! In addition to books set in New York (I love some, but they are the exception to the rule these days), I also am prejudiced against books where the protagonists went to an Ivy League school--I mean they exist in so many hyped novels, and in the real world they're like 0.4% of the population!
This is definitely another layer to the class argument here too (and surely the networking part too). It reminds me of the connections made in sororities and fraternities.
Ooooooo another great topic. I'm Homer Simpson slinking back into the shrubbery: I'm a Midwesterner who lived in NYC for about 8 years in the early 2000's - I had some fun going around to hear readings and do some myself, but didn't manage to make any of what you would call "literary connections" (with agents, editors, or publishing moguls) possibly bc my job didn't have anything to do with the industry, or possibly because I just wasn't wired that way. (See: shrubs above.) I can say that even when you live there and have an MFA it can feel difficult (impossible?) (and tiresome?) (and demoralizing) to try and crack the codes. Besides, there are so many writers there it felt easy to get lost in the shuffle. I'm now about 35 miles north in the 'burbs and feel more connection with other writers than I ever have, locally and online. And I am happily splashing in the pools of small presses. This may have something to do with the confidence that comes with age (Gen X) and learning (again and again) that all that glitters is not gold...Anyway, yes, I like reading non-NYC books from non-NYC writers and all of your points are so well-put.
the best of both worlds!!!! It's hard, I think, to make it anywhere, unless you find the exact right connection. But maybe it's more like find your place to splash! <3
I think I know exactly the "Brooklyn sisters novel" you're talking about, lol. I too tried reading it, found myself violently bored, and gave up. Then I dove into Say Hello to My Little Friend and flat out loved the Miami-ness of it, the place-ness of it, so so much. Other places exist! Who'da thunk?
I think about this stuff a lot too--I don't have an MFA, don't live in NYC, which makes me obscure in a way. But if I'm being honest, I like being obscure. I like residing off the beaten path, out here in the Midwest, in Michigan. It's just hard to convert that obscurity into a readership, a following, some kind of prestige, without moving in those NYC spaces. But it's what I'll have to do--I'm not gonna move there, ever, and thus have to find my readers from the hinterlands.
Literally from "Very Distant Lands," Adam! I love those novels that reek of place. I'll have to add that one to my request list at the library.
You're doing good work for the record. I wonder sometimes if it's that those spaces are so vast--there's SO MUCH Midwest and SO MUCH south and New York City has ... boroughs (arenas), but it's still such a small place really, that it feels the need to stratify in a way that's just not possible in the hinterlands.
I also like being obscure. It's hard to brand the obscure--makes it more fun.
Ahh thank you Cassie!! Honored to be an exception to this rule lol (<3). Even as someone who lives here and went to school here, the secret handshake business model of publishing is exhausting, so I'm with you.
I also just love the way you move in publishing. I'm sure for you your career took a long time, but to someone like me, it makes things look so much more possible through doing the work and publishing great things.
I LOVE THIS — and I am someone who has lived in NYC for almost a decade.
Everything you say here is spot fucking on. Where people went to undergrad (NYU, Columbia), if they did MFAs at those same universities, did the author have media jobs that put them in those book party rooms — these things matter, and they make an enormous difference. Because the spaces that some authors write about, that a lot of industry folks, then, disproportionately "connect" with are also very White and Classed spaces. Much like big four publishing itself.
To me, there is a huge distinction between authors who are (not generationally wealthy) native New Yorkers and those who moved here however long ago and have just made the city their personality. (Your line about wearing the dress - yes.) It's rare work like Lilly Dancyger's that is the standout, and I can't help but come back to the Class of it all. Lilly documents the city like it's a family member that you love but that fucks you over (but that you still love); her work talks about displacement due to gentrification, and the kind of themes you see on the margins that you rarely see in that Literary It Girl novel, but that are the experience of so, so many people here.
Sorry, this comment ran long. But something that continues to burn in my brain year in and year out is the stratospheric wealth gaps in NYC. I grew up working class in the rural Midwest; I have also lived in Minneapolis and Boston. But I've *never* lived around the kind of wealth that so casually exists here. It's wild. Which is to say, writers who were educated in, or who come from, and who consequently have access to those circles have such a leg up. *shrug* Anyway, it's something that folks considering a move here should keep in mind. If writers want to move here for industry reasons and specifically to build those kinds of connections, it's work, and it takes years, but it will absolutely help your career. But I would never suggest that someone move here to "be a writer." You can, truly, write anywhere.
You're so smart. I always love what you have to say. You're so write about Lilly too--I am engrossed in First Love because of that yearning dripping from her pages, which is something so earnest about teenagedom (and friendship--the complicated balance of trying to maintain them as we grow and shapeshift), and it's also so true that her New York is not the New York of tv or ivy leagues. The Class IS the thing--I would actually read a ton more books about New York City if they didn't feel all the same sub-culture.
I'm REALLY interested in this idea of wealth existing so casually because it's so different (in my mind?) to the wealth where I am in North Carolina which feels the opposite of casual. And then how we portray both in literature--which is often that there's no wealth or the wealth is far away (across town / in another area) in the south and where the opposite is probably true for you where the the pot is actually melting. It's such a different existence. (This also reminds me of that guy on TikTok that's always asking to see people's apartments and even though I know they're pre-planned probably, I'm still always amazed and how WILD those apartments are in comparison to anything I've ever seen in real life).
This is so, so refreshing. As someone who writes from the interior West (Colorado, Arizona, Wyoming, New Mexico) this is a particular pet peeve of mine. My next book is about sex, singleness, and desire, and the bulk of what exists as potential comp titles are telling New York stories (and if not NYC, San Fran). It was perplexing to me writing the original book proposal (I'm on to a new version now) whether what I saw as a selling point--relationship stories from small understated cities and gritty rural areas! new! different!--would actually lead to the proposal's "unrelatability," that dreaded "couldn't connect" response.
Sensuality is about sensation--how the air moves, how the seasons unfold, which blossoms are popping, which natural disasters leave places and lives in what kind of rubble--and so to me a book about sex is necessarily a book about place. And of course how we meet people and what options we see ourselves having depends on how we CAN meet people and how many people there are to meet and what type of person they are. We can't learn what we need to about human sexuality and desire by only looking at NYC. There are so many other beautiful spells to cast, from other places... And yet the bulk of books I found are excessively thinky (often weirdly disembodied for being about sex) and unfold in dense manmade environments.
well, if just this comment is any indication, I can't wait to read this book. SENSUAL! SPELLS TO CAST! ARE MOVEMENT! I love everything you're saying here. Get me a galley when the time comes! (Also, Margo Steines talks so highly of you that I feel like we're two degrees of separation away from being friends!)
We ARE practically friends! I have heard such wonderful things about your work too and was distressed to realize I'd overlooked your Substack for so long.
Thanks for this Cassie! In addition to books set in New York (I love some, but they are the exception to the rule these days), I also am prejudiced against books where the protagonists went to an Ivy League school--I mean they exist in so many hyped novels, and in the real world they're like 0.4% of the population!
This is definitely another layer to the class argument here too (and surely the networking part too). It reminds me of the connections made in sororities and fraternities.
Another Appalachian is so good.
Ooooooo another great topic. I'm Homer Simpson slinking back into the shrubbery: I'm a Midwesterner who lived in NYC for about 8 years in the early 2000's - I had some fun going around to hear readings and do some myself, but didn't manage to make any of what you would call "literary connections" (with agents, editors, or publishing moguls) possibly bc my job didn't have anything to do with the industry, or possibly because I just wasn't wired that way. (See: shrubs above.) I can say that even when you live there and have an MFA it can feel difficult (impossible?) (and tiresome?) (and demoralizing) to try and crack the codes. Besides, there are so many writers there it felt easy to get lost in the shuffle. I'm now about 35 miles north in the 'burbs and feel more connection with other writers than I ever have, locally and online. And I am happily splashing in the pools of small presses. This may have something to do with the confidence that comes with age (Gen X) and learning (again and again) that all that glitters is not gold...Anyway, yes, I like reading non-NYC books from non-NYC writers and all of your points are so well-put.
the best of both worlds!!!! It's hard, I think, to make it anywhere, unless you find the exact right connection. But maybe it's more like find your place to splash! <3
This is such a great perspective and much needed. Thank you, Cassie.
Ah, thanks Ruben!
I think I know exactly the "Brooklyn sisters novel" you're talking about, lol. I too tried reading it, found myself violently bored, and gave up. Then I dove into Say Hello to My Little Friend and flat out loved the Miami-ness of it, the place-ness of it, so so much. Other places exist! Who'da thunk?
I think about this stuff a lot too--I don't have an MFA, don't live in NYC, which makes me obscure in a way. But if I'm being honest, I like being obscure. I like residing off the beaten path, out here in the Midwest, in Michigan. It's just hard to convert that obscurity into a readership, a following, some kind of prestige, without moving in those NYC spaces. But it's what I'll have to do--I'm not gonna move there, ever, and thus have to find my readers from the hinterlands.
Great as always!
Literally from "Very Distant Lands," Adam! I love those novels that reek of place. I'll have to add that one to my request list at the library.
You're doing good work for the record. I wonder sometimes if it's that those spaces are so vast--there's SO MUCH Midwest and SO MUCH south and New York City has ... boroughs (arenas), but it's still such a small place really, that it feels the need to stratify in a way that's just not possible in the hinterlands.
I also like being obscure. It's hard to brand the obscure--makes it more fun.