Interview With a Gatekeeper: Riverhead’s Rebecca Saletan
On the Author's Voice, Diversity in Publishing, and Peter Matthiessen
May 20, 2016 By Kerri Arsenault - Literary Hub
The occupational hazard of being an editor includes rarely having a moment of respite, and if you’re Vice President and Editorial Director Rebecca Saletan of Riverhead Books, reprieve comes brief and breathless between early morning interviews, houseguests, Sunday email correspondence, after-hour author meetings, and Friday night industry events. Her work stretches far beyond the nine to five workday. Does Saletan sleep? I doubt it. But at least her authors can rest knowing she’s devoted to them and to raising the bar in publishing.Kerri Arsenault: How did you come to editing?
Rebecca Saletan: I feel like I have the most boring story! Like practically everybody else who went into publishing in my era, I was an English major. It was also that era when the options seemed to be business school, law school, or med school—there wasn’t a lot of other guidance about other fields. But I’d discovered at Yale, or maybe even earlier, that I liked working on other people’s prose in some ways more than on my own. Then my cousin suggested I speak with my aunt’s ex-husband’s ex-girlfriend, who was working at Yale University Press. I went to see her for an informational interview, and she said, listen there might be a job here. MORE
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