Early in my career, I worked as an assistant at a literary agency. Big publishers generally consider taking on only writers already represented by agents, which makes literary agencies a front line of sorts. As the person opening the mail, I was the front line of the front line. I saw the true democratic range of the slush pile, full of pitches that no one had vouched for and, for the most part, that no one ever would.

One thing I learned: There’s a lot of writing out there that you, the reader, just don’t need in your life. Some of it is inaccurate. Some of it is self-serving. Above all, a lot of it is just not interesting enough to find many readers: generic, predictable, telling you something you’ve already heard. Editorial gatekeepers get a bad name, but from another point of view, th

See Full Page