Writer and editor Dan Kois, who works at Slate, joins V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to discuss his debut novel, Vintage Contemporaries, which features a young woman who begins her career as an agent’s assistant in New York in the 1990s. He explains distinctive aspects of the era, including apartment building squatting and communal living. He also reflects on the pleasures of being an editor—a job he loves and that his protagonist eventually takes on. He reads an excerpt from the novel and compares his heroine’s prospects with the prospects of publishing staffers today, and comments on the HarperCollins strike.

To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/

This podcast is produced by Anne Kniggendorf.

Selected Readings:

Dan Kois

Vintage Contemporaries
Facing Future
The World Only Spins Forward (with Isaac Butler)
How To Be a Family
The Martin Chronicles

Others:

The Golden State by Lydia Kiesling
Ours to Lose by Amy Starecheski
Alex Haley
Charles Baxter
Slate
Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe
Maxwell Perkins
Nuyorican Poets Cafe
Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 5 Episode 18: “Unlivable and Untenable.” Molly McGhee on the Punishing Life of Junior Publishing Employees

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S6 Ep. 15: Vintage Contemporaries: Dan Kois on the Joys and Sorrows of Literary New York in the 1990s and 2000s