Notes from a Non-fiction Editor

From the Archive: Meet Jenny Lord. She was my editor on Sins of My Father, and is Executive Publisher at W&N, Orion. She has a lot of interesting things to say about memoir and nonfiction

Recently I revisited this interview I did with my editor soon after my memoir was published and found it so inspiring. I thought I’d share it here with you. This is essential reading for any of you who are interested in writing or publishing memoir…

Interested in knowing more about the collaborative relationship between writer and editor when working on literary memoir, I asked Jenny Lord, my editor and Publisher at W&N to tell me a little about her job and her role as editor of nonfiction titles and of literary memoir.

Hi Jenny, you are both Publisher at W&N and a leading editor of nonfiction. Why does nonfiction appeal to you over fiction?

Jenny: I oversee the whole W&N list, fiction as well as nonfiction. I love fiction: during the pandemic I was reading fiction exclusively for pleasure, but listening to a lot of nonfiction on audio. Having said that, I have always been more drawn to working closely on nonfiction texts. I think it’s largely to do with the ideas, and the fact that nonfiction can enrich your understanding of the world in a more direct way than fiction.

Recently I’ve been working on a fascinating book about what neuroscience can tell us about the parental brain; I’ve been editing a radical group biography that looks at how women artists have engaged with the spirit world; and I’ve just published a book about the history of eugenics that also explores how it’s playing out in the present. You simply can’t get that same level of engagement with your subject in fiction.

Your interest is quite wide-ranging, artistic and scientific.

Isn’t that true to who we are? We all have wide-ranging interests. The challenge of a publisher is getting all that to sit together. Yes, there’s a range of genres that I publish into but many of these books are driven by the personality and voices of the authors as much as the subjects. The science books I am drawn to are often very voice driven, with a clear sense of the author’s personality on the page.

Where does memoir fit into your nonfiction interests?

I love publishing memoir, as you know, and it does feel like a particular kind of privilege. Working with an author not just to shape their idea, but to learn how to write their life into a story is a really interesting process.

What I love about working with a writer closely is that it can be very difficult, for obvious reasons, for them to see a slice of their life as a story with a beginning, middle and end. It’s  quite an unnatural way to look at your experience, and impossible to do so objectively. This is where a strong and trusting editorial relationship is crucial.

There is a different level of responsibility at play with memoir too. You have someone’s own experiences in your hands – it’s not their work, it’s their life, and the consequences of asking them to make cuts, clarify motivations and expand on difficult themes can be significant.

Can you tell us a little about the commissioning process of memoir? Do you expect it to be sold on proposal like nonfiction or do you make allowances because it sometimes sits in that grey area between nonfiction and fiction?

Mostly I receive memoir submissions on proposal, though often more of the manuscript will be already written. I do prefer a proposal, though, because it’s easier to see what the author is trying to do. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t read a whole manuscript, but it’s less common.

The question you are always asking yourself when you’re publishing and reading memoir is, ‘is it universal enough?’ You can find a story interesting, and the writing arresting, but if you can’t answer positively the question, ‘yes, but who cares?’ then it isn’t publishable in a meaningful way. It has to be relevant to readers; they need to be able to see themselves in the story. Otherwise, it’s a nice exercise for the writer and not much more. A writer having a clear idea of how their story will be relevant to readers is important, and bringing that out in a proposal is crucial.

But I should also say that nonfiction editors are used to receiving proposals and seeing beyond what’s on the page with the understanding that it’s difficult for a writer to capture their life in a marketable way. It’s not always until the editorial relationship begins that the memoir solidifies into something that makes sense to a broad readership.

I don’t think I’ve ever acquired a memoir where I haven’t had quite an intense conversation with the writer either before or after acquisition about how the entire book, beyond the proposal, should play out.

I was struck when we worked together on Sins of My Father, how closely you as editor have to step towards commenting on a writer’s psychology. Is there always a risk that your interpretation could cause offence or feel an attack on personality? How would you overcome this?

There is absolutely a risk of this. I guess the thing I always try to make clear is that I am just one person interpreting the story one way. The version of the story you’re telling in your memoir is not the real story in that it’s not following every contour of the lived experience, and it never should; you should always hold something back for yourself, your family and your memory. And my editorial vision is only one possible way of looking at it. I would never propose that an author should tell their story in a particular way or say ‘this is exactly how you should do it.’ But asking the writer the right questions can allow them to dig deeper and come up with the solution themselves.

It’s very like mentoring, coaching or therapy – the process is one of guidance, suggestion and good questioning.

W&N are building a strong literary memoir list, is this something that has happened organically or did you set out to develop this?

There is a certain kind of alchemy to building a literary list. There is definitely a strategic element to it, but the contours of the list will always follow the hearts of the editors who are building it. Within the current team at W&N, we have three editors who love publishing memoir. We all have different tastes, and it works. But we do think about how the memoirs fit together, just as we do with fiction.

Some commercial nonfiction lists might be looking to fill a slot with a certain book, but we don’t tend to do that. We probably don’t publish more than two memoirs a year, or we may not publish any, dependent on what comes in.

Do you think there is growing popularity for literary memoir in the UK? – and if so, why?

Yes, I do. I think readers of a certain kind of literary fiction are more likely to engage with the kind of memoir that is widely published now.

But like most literary genres, the popularity of memoir comes and goes. I remember when I raised Amy Liptrot’s first memoir THE OUTRUN at our acquisitions meeting at Canongate and the conversation about the market for memoir was pretty pessimistic. The nervousness was such that some people felt we should talk about THE OUTRUN as nature writing above and beyond memoir.

And there are trends within the memoir genre that come and go too. There’s a strong sense of fatigue within the industry for nature memoirs right now, but that doesn’t mean that something completely brilliant and fresh won’t come along and blow that nervousness into the wind.

It’s the nature of publishing that we sometimes have to look at things in a reductive way. I’m used to the dismissive lines about various memoir themes – ‘No more motherhood memoirs’, for instance, which is as absurd as saying ‘we don’t want any more memoirs about life!’ But it’s good to be challenged to keep looking for something fresh, and it’s our job as editors and publishers to make books that play with what might be considered a tired theme and make it relevant again.

Lastly, out of all those submissions, what makes a memoir really stand out for you? What are you looking for?

I have a check list in my head.

Originality – every memoir I have published has been very different from the last. There is a reason for this. With room for only one literary memoir on my list a year, I’m not interested in publishing something that’s been done before.

Universality – the reader needs to be able to see themselves in the story. That’s crucial.

Confidence – we need the author to be able to speak for their own story when it comes to publicity. If there is evidence of the author talking about it already then that can help.

Quality – the quality of the writing has to be second to none.