October 2, 2023 • 40 mins
Celeste Marcus is the managing editor of Liberties. She is writing a biography of Chaim Soutine. Liberties is a Journal of Culture and Politics.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
And hello everyone, and welcome tothe And I thought podcast, Yeah,
I'm naming it the actual name ofthe podcast. I heard of that about
a year ago, you know,because the podcast has been around for a
few years. And I said,you know what, we should say,
this is the name of the podcast, because so many people went and be
like, oh what you said before? I can't find it. And I'm
(00:23):
like, that's because it's not thename of the podcast. And then it
hit me the name of the podcastshould be the introduction. And I was
going to start this off completely differentlywith oh my god, I'm having another
neckt day, but uh, Ithought, maybe that may be way too
many people looking at the video forno good reason. So we're gonna skip
(00:48):
the neket day one and we're gonnamove ahead to our row book books.
Go figure, Yeah, you werehoping that was going somewhere else completely,
not to books, unless you're likeI get from the nineteen sixties and they
had whole books of that, thenthat's just like, that's too much work.
You invested too much work in thesixties, and you're investing too much
work now to see that. Movingon, y'all, the books are And
(01:11):
I thought the force was bad,and I thought, being grown up with
z if only our Amia Memoir,in Verse, Foreign Coffee, Widow's Web
and Widow's Debt. You can findall of those books where you find audiobooks.
So yeah, when I say Iwrote books and then I tell you
all the titles, I really meanyou can read. You can listen to
our audio books, but you canread the book other twelve books. Now,
(01:32):
Oh my god, I completely forgoty'all. We had a new book
come out last week. It isa murder mystery done in verse because someone
said it couldn't happen and we went, m, yeah I can, so
we did it. We're still waitingto see if it's good. But it's
(01:53):
there. It it now exists.So it's called And I thought I knew
you and you can get that whereveryou get your books. Pretty much.
Yeah, all right. You're nothere to hear about me, and which
is weird because I am the narcissistof the group. You're here to hear
about our wonderful guests. Wonderful guests. Would you like to introduce yourself?
I would love to. My nameis Celeste Marcus, and shall I share
(02:17):
three facts about myself is that yes, okay. I am the managing editor
of a journal called Librittiest Journal.I am writing a book, a biography
of the artist him Soutine, whichwould be the first English language biography of
Sutine. And two of my writers, two of my favorite writers, have
books coming out in the next oneof them next month and the other in
(02:40):
the next few months. So I'mjust going to promote them. Their names
are Rachel Connolly and Becca Rothfeld.Rachel's book is a novel selling set in
Belfast, called Lazy City, andBecca's is a collection of essays. Becca
is the nonfiction book review for TheWashington Post and the book that she's it's
(03:02):
her first book. It's both oftheir first books and very exciting. And
Becca's book is called All Things AreToo Small, and it is. It
is a book in praise of accessand it is gorgeous. What the essays
of it that I've read are absolutelybrilliant as she is. So those are
(03:22):
those are three facts I'm being.I apologize to my audience today. I
am being literary stereotypical because I amnow a deep literary soul. When you
said essays, I was like,she's in love you love with the essays,
And honestly, I do love likea good collection of essays. How
(03:45):
does the want sell those those notthat's not your business, but you know,
I was just yes, I thinkthat they do sell pretty well.
I mean some of the you know, some of the best sellers are essay
collections. I think that if thewriter is a really interesting, weird,
brilliant person, essay collections can bebetter than anything else because they go fast.
(04:09):
It's like short stories as opposed toas opposed to novels. Like reading
Becca's essays, it's exciting because eachone of them is so crazy and a
different window into a different part ofher insane mind, insane brilliant mind.
So I love it. I likeit because if you want to spend like
(04:30):
a book length amount of time witha person's mind, it's really fun to
get so many different parts of them, you know what I mean, You're
getting the bang for your book becausejust them on so many different subjects that
they've found fascinating. And like theway that Becca writes. She writes with
(04:50):
such obvious passion about whatever it isthat she's talking about, Like every single
subject, whether it be jewelry orcleaning, or sex. She writes about
all of them with the same,like incredibly intense attention and passion, and
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it's just really exciting to be withthat, with that personality for that amount
of time and for that many subjects. I really think I've always said that
essay is a great way to finda new vantage point on a subject that
you didn't even know existed, orthat you find mundane, and then find
someone else's viewpoint on it in ashort period of time. This is something
(05:33):
you do on a novel, butit just takes forever and how oftentimes you
skip over it. Okay, noone wants to keep hearing from the host,
so let's ask you real questions.Let's do it. So the first
question, and everyone's gonna want toknow, is how do you get your
essays you're writing, your poetry acceptedby a magazine since you are managing it,
(05:56):
let's get that out the way.Okay, so we can do that.
I definitely when I were just talkingabout how awful it is to have
to tell writers that the answer isno, and it absolutely is the worst
part of my job. I reallyhate it. But my favorite part of
my job is finding minds that arecompatible with our philosophy and our style,
(06:21):
our house style. So it's immediatelyobvious to me when a writer has read
Liberties and pitches us with an understandingof what it is that we published.
Because we're very unusual, our essaysare longer than most other publications. We
don't write. We don't publish piecesthat are reviews or like pegged to an
(06:45):
event. So usually when you're pitchingother analogous publications, like you know,
the New Yorker or The Atlantic orsomething like that, what they want is
for you to sell them on theidea that whatever you're writing about is relevant
in the news. We never wantthat because we're a quarterly, so everything
we publish has to age like finewine, like you have to. We
(07:09):
have to. It has to bepossible that when we give people an issue
of Liberties that's two years old,nothing in it is like not worth reading
anymore because it's expired, and wecan really tell like we're not going to
publish anything that is going to makeit clear that the thing that was written
was written five months ago, becausemost of our pieces take many months to
(07:30):
write, and they take many monthsto actually edit and then publish, so
it's really obvious when something is writtenin a way that makes it clear that
it wasn't for right now. Andthen, of course, like we publish
Nobel Prize winners and pullets or winnerssome of the best writers in the world,
so the quality is very, veryhigh, and it is disappointing when
(07:55):
we have people pitching us who definitelyhave a worldview that's consistent with ours and
loyalties that are consistent with ours,but they just don't have the skill.
We just got a piece like thisthe other day that was really beautiful,
was championing all the right values andsupporting I don't want to like identify the
(08:16):
person, but supporting supporting minorities thatI it was advancing a worldview that was
really important in one that I wanted. But the writing was just not good
enough. And so you know,you have it has to be clear that
the person has read us and understandsus, and they also have to have
what it takes. Okay, Soon the end, I thought, ladies
are out, thank you. Wejust wanted to know, okay, So
(08:43):
let's talk about actual you. Now, why do you get started and loving
the written word? I know you'veheard that question the thousand times before,
but like I really want to know, it's a great question. It's such
a hard question to answer. Ithink that the way that it happened for
me because I'm a writer and I'malso an editor, but I'm really on
(09:05):
this podcast in my capacity as aneditor, So I'm gonna just be talking
about that aspect of the crew.I don't have to well, I'll talk
about both. You want to hearabout me? Do you want to talk
about I love I really really lovefinding people who I know are perfect for
ex subject like so for example,this is like one of my favorite stories
(09:30):
about my job. And I'll talkabout my own writing in a second,
but this is like the kind ofthing that really just it just makes me
so freaking happy. There's a woman, brilliant woman my age so I think
she's she's twenty six, not twentyseven. She's a little younger than I
am, and really a really sharpmind and use language in a really beautiful
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way. And I'm I like wasI was with her in like ary circles,
but i'd seen I'd never seen anythingthat she'd written, and I was
talking to her about just something thatshe'd been thinking about recently she was talking
she'd been having a lot of likecomplicated thoughts and feelings about a composer,
and I said, you know,you should, you should try to write
this up. And she said,I actually, I've already written something about
(10:20):
it, but it's just for myself. It's like a journal. I'm only
I only wrote it for myself.And I was like, well, I
would really love to see it.You know, I'm not going to force
you to make it public if you'renot, if you're not comfortable with other
people reading it, but if you'dbe comfortable sharing it with me, I'd
love to see it. And shesent it to me. I like,
I checked my email five o'clock inthe morning and like opened it and could
not go back to sleep without finishingit because it was so beautiful and thoughtful
(10:45):
and gorgeous. And I wrote toher and I was like, we don't
published this. And it was likefive thousand words when she sent it in,
which is about the length of aliberty's essay. And then my editor
and I got her on the phoneand said, this has to be you
know, you have to make somethings longer, you have to expand some
things. It's nine thousand words andit's in the next issue. Finally,
(11:07):
like I should we have a copysomewhere, I should hold it up,
but it's not right here. Butthe next issue comes out in like two
weeks and she's in it. Hername is Anna Balen and it is gorgeous
and I am just so happy thatI was. She's never been published before.
This is the first essay with hername on it that's ever appeared anywhere,
and it is like, you know, she's in it. She's in
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the issue with other very well knownwriters. Some of the best selling authors
in the English language are in thatissue. So it's just so exciting to
be able to give this young womanthe respect and privilege of appearing like alongside
some of her heroes. It wasreally cool. So that's the kind of
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thing that I'm just so passionate aboutthat kind of editorial work, and that's
really exciting. So for me,I have really like three subjects that I
return to most. I write aboutart, I write about Israeli politics,
and I write about women pretty broadrange. And I think the thing the
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way that I think about what Ichoose to write is is there something that
I need to read on this subjectthat no one has written yet, and
then if there if other people havealready written it, then I don't feel
like I need to. But ifI feel like there's something that has to
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be said about something that I reallycare about that no one else is saying,
that's how I pick what I writeabout. So, for example,
my last the essay that I wrotefor the previous issue of Liberties was called
a Liberal Zion and it was aboutthe right word lurch in Israeli politics towards
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authoritarianism, and no one had.People have sort of written shorter pieces about
that and about the protests that havebeen going on in Israel, but this
was a very long piece about thehistory of those protests. And people don't
really understand Americans especially, but IsraeliIs also don't really talk about the fact
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that a lot of the a lotof the extreme right in Israel is supported
by and motivated by non white Jewswho are oppressed originally when they came to
Israel, and the liberal progressive elitein Israel is overwhelmingly Ashkenazi Jews, so
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white Jews and the far right,the far right electorate is really the Jews
that came to Israel. In theearly years the States, so the forties,
fifties and sixties from Arab countries orfrom from eastern Middle Eastern countries,
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not all, not all Arab,but like the Iranian Jewish community is very
very big, the Syrian Jewish communityis big. And they were they were
met with, they were they wereput they were They came over in large
numbers at the same time because Arabsstarted Arab countries started evicting them when Israel
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was established and the Jewish government,the Israeli government didn't have anywhere to put
them, so they were putting themin like really horrific Basically they were supposed
to be like in tournament camps wherethey were just left because there was nowhere
else. The country didn't have theinfrastructure to absorb them, and it was
very poor, like the most ofthe people who had who came to the
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country didn't have any money. TheArab Jews who came to the country,
the countries that they fled, thecountries that they left, some of them
were very very wealthy, but theirformer governments didn't allow them to take any
of their money with them. Theyseized all of their properties. So they
came they like there were Irani andJews. The Irani and Jewish community in
particular was very, very wealthy andhad enjoyed a lot of a high status
(15:18):
in Iranian society. But then theIranian government seized all their assets before they
were leaving the country. So theywent once at the beginning of a flight,
they were very wealthy. When theylanded in Israel, they were the
poorest of the poor. And theystayed in those internment camps for years,
and they never forgave the Israeli governmentand the Ashkenazi Jewish community for the treatment
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that they had when they first arrivedthere, and like, no one knows
this about Israeli history. And soit really is key in understanding the protests
that are happening right now and talkingabout it in a way that is like
sensitive to the issues that are thatare on the ground. Because even American
American Jews talk about Israeli politics asif it's just Israel, it's just graphs
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perfectly onto American politics, and sothey associate colored Jews with the Democratic Party,
which is totally wrong. It doesn'tmake sense in that context. So
that was like, that was oneexample of a piece that I just wrote
and then my next essay is actuallyit's about rape and sexual assault and what
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it does, what it does tovictims, because I really do feel like
this is very personal, but Ireally feel like I didn't have the reading
material that I needed to understand whathad happened to me. And I have
friends who I have a friend whojust had a horrible experience, and I'm
(17:00):
telling her all of the things thatI needed to hear, But I wish
that I could give her something toread that she could reread every day that
would tell her all the things thatshe needs to hear. So that's the
kind of that's exactly a good exampleof the kind of thing that I choose
to write. I want to writethe thing that I know she and millions
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like her need to read in orderto just get from A to B to
C and hopefully to normal. Shewas on the phone the other day,
we were talking and she said,how long did it take before you felt
normal again? And it's just sucha heartbreaking question, But it's a question
that so many women ask themselves.So I want to have an opportunity to
answer it in a way that willreach more people than I can just talk
(17:45):
to. I love how that youwere using your platform so very very responsibly.
Thank you. Really go out hereand change the world and put the
words out there that can change viewpoints and thoughts, and that's the beginning
of the real change in the world. Wow, I feel like you're a
(18:07):
responsible, grown literary adult. Iam, in any way, shape or
form, am I responsible grown literaryadults? Thank you? I try.
It was just on television, Like, so I wrote a poetry book about
cocktails. Let me show you howto make a cocktail your books? I
don't I know this is I alsohost podcasts, and so I'm not going
(18:29):
to try to interview you, butI'm just okay. So my next question
is, tell me about your podcasts. Oh no, Well, we kind
of transitioned into doing this thing thatI think is really fun where every month
we host this like public salon andthat anybody can come to. It's it
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costs ten dollars for non subscribers.We're partnering with an organization called inter Intellect.
They're great, you've checked them out, you would love them. They
they host us on their platform,and so Liberties and Interintellect subscribe members get
free attendance, and so every monthI and one of our writers have a
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salon where like for the first thirtyto forty five minutes of it, it's
just me and them talking, andthen for the rest of like the hour
hour and a half, everybody inthe salon can ask questions of either of
us and tell us what they thinkabout the subject. So it's a really
wonderful way of connecting with our members. I love it. We just had
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one, the most recent one isthe most successful on like sixty something people
were in attendance on the zoom,which was really cool for me, And
it was with my colleague who isthe editor of the of the journal,
Leon Weasels here, and we weretalking about liberalism, which is the philosophical
and political tradition to which we arecommitted and just what are what are the
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real values of liberalism, what dowe stand for, and how does it
inform the philosophy of the journal.And it was just so fun literally,
like I mean, people didn't stayup with the entire question and answer because
the event, like just the conversationwas like an hour, but there were
people. There were like fifty peoplewho were there for two hours talking to
us about liberalism. So it wasreally great. That was like so much
(20:19):
fun. Yeah, yeah, okay, that's amazing. Wow. It's like
a audio essay exactly. It's aninteractive audio essay. That is our podcast,
an interactive audio essay. First youhear an essay, then you asked
the writers. Excuse me, Ihave thoughts. I feel like so many
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people want to do that when they'relistening to podcasts, they want to like
talk back. So this is theopportunity to do that. Oh I do
I definitely talk back, And thenquite honestly, quite a few times I
just had them on to let themknow what I thought. Okay, oh
I love that. Oh my god, what a good idea. I guess.
Excuse me, this is what Ithink. Listen. I love that.
(21:03):
That's a great way to go throughlife. Everyone have that attitude.
It is so bad. I waslike, I've done that to my favorite
authors too. I feel like thiscould have been improved. I really what
an iditor. This light is motioncensored, and so I always like,
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I'm like, feel free to dothe same thing to my work. I
thoroughly understand and appreciate it. Andthey've done it like they do it and
they're like, yeah, I feellike this, this, and the minutes,
and they're like, I hope Ididn't hurt your feelings. I'm like,
I've been a published author since Iwas ten. I mean, I've
been ripping me a new one sinceI was ten years old. I don't
care. Started writing when you wereten? Did you publish poetry when you
were ten? Yes? That's socool? Where? Why? What?
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Like? What like put that intoyour head? Where are you from?
I'm from Maryland. I'm in DCright now. Did you know that you
need that? Are you in Marylandnow? Yeah? I live in Annapolis
thirty minutes apart. Yeah, Iwas like, I could have drove odo
interview. You should come to ourevent that we're hosting next month. We're
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hosting out that next month, we'redoing our first in person panel thing.
It's gonna be fun. You should. I'll sell you that. I mean,
you are currently on this podcast andI'm hosting it. Are you sure
I'm smart enough to attend? Absolutely? Listen. You've been a published author
since you were ten years old.You don't even get to make jokes like
that. It was kind of funnybecause sometimes like d being class and my
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professor would be like I don't likethis. I don't think it would get
published. And I really wanted tobe like, sweetie, I've been published
longer than you've been thinking about beingpublished, but I didn't. I love
it. That's so great, Alright, it's true. Like because they were
like, I gotta published like eightyears ago, I'm like, it's money,
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Yeah it is. I was thinkingabout that. I can tell me
wrong. You know, there's somany of my friends who were told by
professors that they weren't good writers.Like, thank god, no one cared.
I thank god nobody was like,oh, maybe I shouldn't be a
writer because this guy doesn't think thatI'm a good writer. Like I'm sure
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there are people who just stopped becausebecause they got negative feedback. I kind
of use it as fuel. Gottarun on that. I've always said,
like I've said it like this sinceI have been published for so long.
I have been pitching the Big Fivesince I was eleven, And those rejection
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letters can come back as a simpleword that says nope, yeah, and
at eleven, if you can learnhow to do that and then get up
the next day and write a newone, I ain't nobody gonna bother you,
you're like, I absolutely hate whatyou wrote. That's good. I'm
gonna write again tomorrow. You canhate that too. But it's like,
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if you are in a position forpeople to be giving you negative criticism,
you're already accomplished a lot because peopleare reading your stuff. Like I was
just talking to a friend about thatwe have an idea for an organization,
and he was like, a lotof people are going to come after us
for this, and I was like, good, I hope. So if
no one's coming after you, thatmeans no one's heard of you exactly?
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Is your respectful and nice to peopleexactly? And I mean you you're trying
to change the world. People aregoing to hate pieces of what you do
anyway, So that's right betted forgoing in the right direction, right the
best. It's like I get lettersfrom readers, and the best, even
like the most sympathetic ones are criticalbecause I write about things that people have
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strong feelings about, so they're alwaysgoing to be things they disagree with,
even if they agree with like ninof what I wrote, the part that
they disagree with, it's going toreally animate them to write back to me
and explain to me what they thinkI got wrong because they care deeply about
the thing I wrote about. Imean, if you're not writing about if
you're not doing that and you're pickingthings that people don't care about, it's
(25:11):
kind of boring. Like what's thepoint. So if we think about essays
our thought pieces, so they shouldelicit emotions and enough emotions to have thoughts
and enough thoughts to have actions.And obviously the people who are writing you
have had emotions, thoughts and actions. That's what I think accomplished. Now
back to the back on track,because I feel like I'm on a soapbox.
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I like it. Girl, youlook good on that soapbox. Oh
I'm gonna tell you. I don'thave on my heels, so I look
a little chubby on the bottom half. I pick my heels on on that
soapbox, I'm gonna look amazing.I believe that you're doing that soapbox a
favor wearing it. Okay, solet's go ahead and move on to like
the third question, which was actuallyyou had a question for me and I
(25:55):
would love to answer it. Great. What was the question? Well,
I asked you how you started writing, and I wanted to but I have
more questions like, I want toknow when you first you said that you
have twelve books? Right? Ihave eighteen altogether, yet eighteen? What
was the twelve? Was that?Twelve was poetry collection? Twelves that aren't
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audiobooks? Or sixth that are?And twelve that aren't? Okay? Are
these are these books poetry collections orare they novels? What are they?
Most of them are poetry collections,some of them are novels. And when
did you write your first one firstnovel? When I was twelve? When
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did you write your first poetry collection? Seventeen? My first poetry collection at
seventeen, and I got twelve ofthem published? Wow? Wow, So
you wrote your first novel at twelve? What was it? What was it
about? And did you show itto anybody? Who did you show it
(26:57):
to first? I showed it toJade first, my writing partner that's normally
here. Yes, I've known herwhen she was four years old. I
was why did I get too?Yeah? Jade is handling Frankfort stuff.
(27:18):
Okay, thanks Jared Frankfort book fair. Right, Yeah, there's a lot
of that, there's a whole Ohgod, that's so sweet of her.
Is she going to be there too. Yeah, yeah, she's going.
I'm I'm currently in class for biology. I have three biology classes that I'm
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taking this semester, so I can'tdo frankfort this and that. Wow.
Oh yeah, I'm working on myfourth degree. What and what? What
is it? This one is adegree and I'm doing a dual degree is
actually biology and communication, so it'llbe fourth and fifth and then gets and
that'll be a six chess. Soyou hate school, I actually do.
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But I woke up one morning duringright during COVID and decided that I wanted
to be a physician's assistant. Whybecause that before I became a writer,
I wanted I'm going to cut mostof this out. Okay, sorry,
I'll stop. Before I wanted tobe a writer, I wanted to be
a neural surgeon. I was fiveyears old. I always got stuck with
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the books about the last person.I ate slow, so I always got
stuck with anomy books. And theanatomy books were for people who were in
fourth grade, and so I startedto learn how to because I'm reading it
like every day. So I starteda lot about anatomy and stuff to put
together. So by the time Iwas six, I could explain the stages
of pregnancy from like the cell splittingto the my tooses, to the to
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the ball, to the zaigo tothe yeah, to the feet. I
could explain that by the time Iwas six CH's and then I fell in
love with the system, and soI decided I wanted to be a neurosurgeon.
And then at seven, so onesaid I have written the best thing
they had ever read, and theywere an adult, and I decided I
wanted to be a writer. Andthen at ten I got published. Crazy,
So what is what are the otherfive degrees? I have a degree
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in biology, just the tiny babyone associates, we don't count that I
have a degree in business, andI have a degree in literature. I
have mostly I just did not applythe graduation for graduation and my degree in
creative writing, because who the heckis going to use a degree in creative
(29:40):
writing, right, So I'm goingfor a bachelor's and communications in biology so
that I can apply for the master'sprogram as a physician's assistant. Okay,
I'll stop grilling in with questions.Thank you. I actually don't mind.
I wish there were more writing questions. Sorry you feel like I'm accinating woman
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as my as my professor said,He was like, I just want you
to know. This is the onlytime I did get my feelings. Are
you write pop poetry? You don'twrite real poetry? Oh my god,
dang, that really hurt my feelings. And then Jade was like, do
you know that's what we are?We're pop poets. So I knows that's
such a gross thing to say tosomething. July understand. But then I
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was like, Hey, I'm theone that has the beach house off of
poetry yet out that's so mean.What an attitude. I own a beach
home because I write poetry. Youown a chair and a desk and all
coach and a grudge. Apparently good. Anyway, moving off, what would
(30:55):
we would discuss? Oh, canyou talk a little bit about the magazine?
And I feel like we covered thatquestion though, and like what are
the goals of the magazine? ButI feel like we really covered that question.
But let's just talk about the magazinein general. And you're gonna say
something interesting and I'm going to belike, wow, because this interview has
gone places I did not expect itto go, like Israel politics. Sorry,
(31:19):
I was like, she definitely isnot expecting me to go all the
way to the Middle East right now, because when you said politics of is
really politics, I'm a good God, that's a hard like and I ask,
so I'm doing like an encyclopedia thatwas just one long essay. Okay,
I know it was. That's theproblem with that subject. I mean,
okay, this is a good wayof talking about the journal broadly.
(31:42):
You know, the us is thatwe publish are about difficult subjects like Israeli
politics, but the writing is reallybeautiful, so it's matching. We have
the same standards stylistically for our writersas we do philosophically and politically and intellectually,
(32:05):
so it's all of a on parwith one another. So they're all
waited the same for us and shouldbe as beautiful as it is interesting and
as interesting as it is smart.And we have a lot of writers who
write for other major publications. Butthis is bragging a little bit. One
(32:30):
of my favorite things, probably myfavorite thing to hear from a writer is
that we're their favorite place to writefor because we want them. That's how
we That was like, when wehear that, we know we're doing something
right, that's really like the standardfor success. One standard for success for
me is just like, are thesewriters who are amazing and could be published
(32:52):
anywhere and are published everywhere, arethey coming back to us because they know
that we're going to understand this subjectand allow them to write about it in
a way that doesn't squish them,doesn't edit them out, you know,
other places, most of the reallywell known publications don't allow writers to sound
(33:14):
like themselves. They make them soundlike the house. And it's just like,
what is the point of that,Like why would you have why take
a talented writer and make them soundlike everybody else in your pages? And
which really is making them all soundlike you? And we never disrespect writers
by doing that, And that isa big part of our uditorial philosophy.
(33:37):
We are liberals, We are notconservatives, and we are not progressives,
so that is like a particular intellectualand political orientation. We do publish people
who don't identify as liberals. We'vepublished you know, Bernie supporters in our
pages, but nothing that we publish, nothing that we publish by them,
(33:57):
will be inconsistent with our values.So we'll definitely publish people who like you
know, if we got all ofour writers in a room together and we
ask them a question, like aquestion about abortion, they'd agree on ninety
nine percent of the stuff that they'dbe talking about. But the stuff that
they disagree about, they'd disagree aboutintensely. You know, we publish religious
(34:20):
people, and we published progressive people, and we publish people who take religion
very seriously and their religion very seriously, and we publish people who think that
religion is evil. But we wouldnever publish something that says that religion is
evil. So we give them therespect to allow them to appear in our
pages and to write what they believe, but not all that they believe,
(34:44):
and we would never force them tosay anything that they don't think. So,
for example, we have a socialistwriting for us, who is a
writer whom I respect a lot,who's writing for us about film, but
it's not going to be an essayadvancing socialism because we're not a socialist publication.
So yeah, that's a nutshell.Thank you. That's very very interesting,
(35:07):
and that I've never heard it saidso eloquantly, both maybe taking words
and this does not happen on mypodcast. I'm like, perfectly comfortable with
being both eloquent and elegant. That'smost of what I'm going for most of
the time. Great and you getsucceeding. Last question that I have for
(35:29):
you about writing today is what isentailed in the job of a managing editor.
Okay, So the other thing that'sinteresting about our publication is that we
are I wish I could show youa copy of the journal. Here is
an old copy. This is acouple of issues ago. But this is
(35:51):
what it looks like. This ishow long it is. This one's three
hundred and thirty pages. Most tothem are between most of them are about
three hundred and sixty three. Yeah, three hundred and sixty pages. And
we do that four times a year, so they're quite long. And we
have a staff of three. Soit's three people doing all of this four
(36:12):
times a year. Three So whatwe're doing on our budget. Yeah,
it's crazy. It's a lot ofwork. I handle all of the logistical
stuff from an editorial, from theeditorial end, as well as the actual
editing because my boss and I myeditor boss. So I have a publisher
who is my my like I don'tknow business boss, and I have the
(36:37):
editor in chief of the publication whois my editorial boss, and he and
I edit the pieces together, andhe does a lot of well, he
does a lot of the communication directlywith the writers, although I also communicate
directly with them. I also handleeverything like sending them out their contracts,
making sure their contracts are set inon time, you know, making sure
(36:59):
that everything is organized properly, makingsure that I have copies of all of
the issues and I can search themand send them out. So I both
get to do really fun things liketell Anna Balen that she can absolutely write
this piece on Mahler and reach outto a writer whose work I really admire
and ask them to write for us. And I also like get emails frantically
(37:22):
from people who can't figure out howto sign their contracts and you know,
don't or one you know, Iwas in I was in Spain last week
with my girlfriend and it was like, you know, a very romantic trip
we were taking together, and Igot this call from a writer who was
in Albania and hadn't gotten paid yetand he's living on a shoe string,
(37:43):
like very bohemian writer who literally hadyou know, some very small amount in
his account and needed to be wiredthe money right away, so I'm like
trying to and like he got themoney and then took a flight from Albania
to Madrid. Oh no, hewas in from Italy to Madrid to meet
us, which is kind of hilarious, like as soon as Yeah, so
that was funny, that kind ofthing. The things that I'm like stressed
(38:07):
about logistically are making for that everybodysends in their contracts. I keep track
of all of the completed pieces,so you know, we do say we
do like five rounds with the writerabout on a specific essay. I have
to have make sure that the piecethat is going into the final version of
the issue is the final version oftheir essay and not versions one through five.
(38:32):
That kind of thing, And yeah, that's what I do. So
where can we find out more informationabout you as a writer because you have
a book coming out when you finishwriting it. It's true, I don't
have a website, which is terrible. I really should have a website.
I do have Twitter and Instagram.I also paint These are mine my paintings.
(39:00):
Yes, so I have an Instagramcelest Marcus Art and my Twitter is
celest Marcus. I'm the one who'sdescribed as the managing editor of Liberties.
So you can definitely go there,but you should also go to Liberties Journal
dot com and subscribe because it iswonderful. Well, you'll have to take
care of my second follow up questionson Instagram Twitter, celest Marcus uh See
(39:23):
asked if she's selling any of thosepaintings, because I might actually want one.
She does sell the paintings. Therewe go. I thought that was
very important to know. Sorry,I forgot to say that. Sorry,
I always forget that I sell them. I do. I just got a
studio actually, so that's exciting.Up is Yeah, and also subscribe to
(39:46):
liberties and so you can now knowabout us. Hey, I'm well Nona
and one of the and I thoughtladies you could find out everything your ladies
are up to at www dot andI thought ladies dot com. And while
you're there, go a minute.Go ahead, while you're there, take
a moment and go to the middleof the page and see with the charities
(40:06):
that we probably support. We askthat you go ahead and give them support
too. That does not necessarily meanmoney. That could mean that you could
just give them knowledge in or someof your time. Come on, you
know the one that where they flyover the Ethiopia and build orphanages. They
need time more than they need moneyin your actual digging hands. Yeah,
try that one anyway. Remember thatwisdom is all around you if you're open
(40:29):
to finding it and accepting It's apiece of love. You guys from well
no, not in the Missing Jade. Oh yeah, thanks for listening.
And hello everyone, and welcome tothe And I thought podcast, Yeah,
I'm naming it the actual name ofthe podcast. I heard of that about
a year ago, you know,because the podcast has been around for a
few years. And I said,you know what, we should say,
this is the name of the podcast, because so many people went and be
like, oh what you said before? I can't find it. And I'm
(00:23):
like, that's because it's not thename of the podcast. And then it
hit me the name of the podcastshould be the introduction. And I was
going to start this off completely differentlywith oh my god, I'm having another
neckt day, but uh, Ithought, maybe that may be way too
many people looking at the video forno good reason. So we're gonna skip
(00:48):
the neket day one and we're gonnamove ahead to our row book books.
Go figure, Yeah, you werehoping that was going somewhere else completely,
not to books, unless you're likeI get from the nineteen sixties and they
had whole books of that, thenthat's just like, that's too much work.
You invested too much work in thesixties, and you're investing too much
work now to see that. Movingon, y'all, the books are And
(01:11):
I thought the force was bad,and I thought, being grown up with
z if only our Amia Memoir,in Verse, Foreign Coffee, Widow's Web
and Widow's Debt. You can findall of those books where you find audiobooks.
So yeah, when I say Iwrote books and then I tell you
all the titles, I really meanyou can read. You can listen to
our audio books, but you canread the book other twelve books. Now,
(01:32):
Oh my god, I completely forgoty'all. We had a new book
come out last week. It isa murder mystery done in verse because someone
said it couldn't happen and we went, m, yeah I can, so
we did it. We're still waitingto see if it's good. But it's
(01:53):
there. It it now exists.So it's called And I thought I knew
you and you can get that whereveryou get your books. Pretty much.
Yeah, all right. You're nothere to hear about me, and which
is weird because I am the narcissistof the group. You're here to hear
about our wonderful guests. Wonderful guests. Would you like to introduce yourself?
I would love to. My nameis Celeste Marcus, and shall I share
(02:17):
three facts about myself is that yes, okay. I am the managing editor
of a journal called Librittiest Journal.I am writing a book, a biography
of the artist him Soutine, whichwould be the first English language biography of
Sutine. And two of my writers, two of my favorite writers, have
books coming out in the next oneof them next month and the other in
(02:40):
the next few months. So I'mjust going to promote them. Their names
are Rachel Connolly and Becca Rothfeld.Rachel's book is a novel selling set in
Belfast, called Lazy City, andBecca's is a collection of essays. Becca
is the nonfiction book review for TheWashington Post and the book that she's it's
(03:02):
her first book. It's both oftheir first books and very exciting. And
Becca's book is called All Things AreToo Small, and it is. It
is a book in praise of accessand it is gorgeous. What the essays
of it that I've read are absolutelybrilliant as she is. So those are
(03:22):
those are three facts I'm being.I apologize to my audience today. I
am being literary stereotypical because I amnow a deep literary soul. When you
said essays, I was like,she's in love you love with the essays,
And honestly, I do love likea good collection of essays. How
(03:45):
does the want sell those those notthat's not your business, but you know,
I was just yes, I thinkthat they do sell pretty well.
I mean some of the you know, some of the best sellers are essay
collections. I think that if thewriter is a really interesting, weird,
brilliant person, essay collections can bebetter than anything else because they go fast.
(04:09):
It's like short stories as opposed toas opposed to novels. Like reading
Becca's essays, it's exciting because eachone of them is so crazy and a
different window into a different part ofher insane mind, insane brilliant mind.
So I love it. I likeit because if you want to spend like
(04:30):
a book length amount of time witha person's mind, it's really fun to
get so many different parts of them, you know what I mean, You're
getting the bang for your book becausejust them on so many different subjects that
they've found fascinating. And like theway that Becca writes. She writes with
(04:50):
such obvious passion about whatever it isthat she's talking about, Like every single
subject, whether it be jewelry orcleaning, or sex. She writes about
all of them with the same,like incredibly intense attention and passion, and
(05:13):
it's just really exciting to be withthat, with that personality for that amount
of time and for that many subjects. I really think I've always said that
essay is a great way to finda new vantage point on a subject that
you didn't even know existed, orthat you find mundane, and then find
someone else's viewpoint on it in ashort period of time. This is something
(05:33):
you do on a novel, butit just takes forever and how oftentimes you
skip over it. Okay, noone wants to keep hearing from the host,
so let's ask you real questions.Let's do it. So the first
question, and everyone's gonna want toknow, is how do you get your
essays you're writing, your poetry acceptedby a magazine since you are managing it,
(05:56):
let's get that out the way.Okay, so we can do that.
I definitely when I were just talkingabout how awful it is to have
to tell writers that the answer isno, and it absolutely is the worst
part of my job. I reallyhate it. But my favorite part of
my job is finding minds that arecompatible with our philosophy and our style,
(06:21):
our house style. So it's immediatelyobvious to me when a writer has read
Liberties and pitches us with an understandingof what it is that we published.
Because we're very unusual, our essaysare longer than most other publications. We
don't write. We don't publish piecesthat are reviews or like pegged to an
(06:45):
event. So usually when you're pitchingother analogous publications, like you know,
the New Yorker or The Atlantic orsomething like that, what they want is
for you to sell them on theidea that whatever you're writing about is relevant
in the news. We never wantthat because we're a quarterly, so everything
we publish has to age like finewine, like you have to. We
(07:09):
have to. It has to bepossible that when we give people an issue
of Liberties that's two years old,nothing in it is like not worth reading
anymore because it's expired, and wecan really tell like we're not going to
publish anything that is going to makeit clear that the thing that was written
was written five months ago, becausemost of our pieces take many months to
(07:30):
write, and they take many monthsto actually edit and then publish, so
it's really obvious when something is writtenin a way that makes it clear that
it wasn't for right now. Andthen, of course, like we publish
Nobel Prize winners and pullets or winnerssome of the best writers in the world,
so the quality is very, veryhigh, and it is disappointing when
(07:55):
we have people pitching us who definitelyhave a worldview that's consistent with ours and
loyalties that are consistent with ours,but they just don't have the skill.
We just got a piece like thisthe other day that was really beautiful,
was championing all the right values andsupporting I don't want to like identify the
(08:16):
person, but supporting supporting minorities thatI it was advancing a worldview that was
really important in one that I wanted. But the writing was just not good
enough. And so you know,you have it has to be clear that
the person has read us and understandsus, and they also have to have
what it takes. Okay, Soon the end, I thought, ladies
are out, thank you. Wejust wanted to know, okay, So
(08:43):
let's talk about actual you. Now, why do you get started and loving
the written word? I know you'veheard that question the thousand times before,
but like I really want to know, it's a great question. It's such
a hard question to answer. Ithink that the way that it happened for
me because I'm a writer and I'malso an editor, but I'm really on
(09:05):
this podcast in my capacity as aneditor, So I'm gonna just be talking
about that aspect of the crew.I don't have to well, I'll talk
about both. You want to hearabout me? Do you want to talk
about I love I really really lovefinding people who I know are perfect for
ex subject like so for example,this is like one of my favorite stories
(09:30):
about my job. And I'll talkabout my own writing in a second,
but this is like the kind ofthing that really just it just makes me
so freaking happy. There's a woman, brilliant woman my age so I think
she's she's twenty six, not twentyseven. She's a little younger than I
am, and really a really sharpmind and use language in a really beautiful
(09:56):
way. And I'm I like wasI was with her in like ary circles,
but i'd seen I'd never seen anythingthat she'd written, and I was
talking to her about just something thatshe'd been thinking about recently she was talking
she'd been having a lot of likecomplicated thoughts and feelings about a composer,
and I said, you know,you should, you should try to write
this up. And she said,I actually, I've already written something about
(10:20):
it, but it's just for myself. It's like a journal. I'm only
I only wrote it for myself.And I was like, well, I
would really love to see it.You know, I'm not going to force
you to make it public if you'renot, if you're not comfortable with other
people reading it, but if you'dbe comfortable sharing it with me, I'd
love to see it. And shesent it to me. I like,
I checked my email five o'clock inthe morning and like opened it and could
not go back to sleep without finishingit because it was so beautiful and thoughtful
(10:45):
and gorgeous. And I wrote toher and I was like, we don't
published this. And it was likefive thousand words when she sent it in,
which is about the length of aliberty's essay. And then my editor
and I got her on the phoneand said, this has to be you
know, you have to make somethings longer, you have to expand some
things. It's nine thousand words andit's in the next issue. Finally,
(11:07):
like I should we have a copysomewhere, I should hold it up,
but it's not right here. Butthe next issue comes out in like two
weeks and she's in it. Hername is Anna Balen and it is gorgeous
and I am just so happy thatI was. She's never been published before.
This is the first essay with hername on it that's ever appeared anywhere,
and it is like, you know, she's in it. She's in
(11:28):
the issue with other very well knownwriters. Some of the best selling authors
in the English language are in thatissue. So it's just so exciting to
be able to give this young womanthe respect and privilege of appearing like alongside
some of her heroes. It wasreally cool. So that's the kind of
(11:50):
thing that I'm just so passionate aboutthat kind of editorial work, and that's
really exciting. So for me,I have really like three subjects that I
return to most. I write aboutart, I write about Israeli politics,
and I write about women pretty broadrange. And I think the thing the
(12:16):
way that I think about what Ichoose to write is is there something that
I need to read on this subjectthat no one has written yet, and
then if there if other people havealready written it, then I don't feel
like I need to. But ifI feel like there's something that has to
(12:37):
be said about something that I reallycare about that no one else is saying,
that's how I pick what I writeabout. So, for example,
my last the essay that I wrotefor the previous issue of Liberties was called
a Liberal Zion and it was aboutthe right word lurch in Israeli politics towards
(13:01):
authoritarianism, and no one had.People have sort of written shorter pieces about
that and about the protests that havebeen going on in Israel, but this
was a very long piece about thehistory of those protests. And people don't
really understand Americans especially, but IsraeliIs also don't really talk about the fact
(13:24):
that a lot of the a lotof the extreme right in Israel is supported
by and motivated by non white Jewswho are oppressed originally when they came to
Israel, and the liberal progressive elitein Israel is overwhelmingly Ashkenazi Jews, so
(13:46):
white Jews and the far right,the far right electorate is really the Jews
that came to Israel. In theearly years the States, so the forties,
fifties and sixties from Arab countries orfrom from eastern Middle Eastern countries,
(14:09):
not all, not all Arab,but like the Iranian Jewish community is very
very big, the Syrian Jewish communityis big. And they were they were
met with, they were they wereput they were They came over in large
numbers at the same time because Arabsstarted Arab countries started evicting them when Israel
(14:31):
was established and the Jewish government,the Israeli government didn't have anywhere to put
them, so they were putting themin like really horrific Basically they were supposed
to be like in tournament camps wherethey were just left because there was nowhere
else. The country didn't have theinfrastructure to absorb them, and it was
very poor, like the most ofthe people who had who came to the
(14:54):
country didn't have any money. TheArab Jews who came to the country,
the countries that they fled, thecountries that they left, some of them
were very very wealthy, but theirformer governments didn't allow them to take any
of their money with them. Theyseized all of their properties. So they
came they like there were Irani andJews. The Irani and Jewish community in
particular was very, very wealthy andhad enjoyed a lot of a high status
(15:18):
in Iranian society. But then theIranian government seized all their assets before they
were leaving the country. So theywent once at the beginning of a flight,
they were very wealthy. When theylanded in Israel, they were the
poorest of the poor. And theystayed in those internment camps for years,
and they never forgave the Israeli governmentand the Ashkenazi Jewish community for the treatment
(15:41):
that they had when they first arrivedthere, and like, no one knows
this about Israeli history. And soit really is key in understanding the protests
that are happening right now and talkingabout it in a way that is like
sensitive to the issues that are thatare on the ground. Because even American
American Jews talk about Israeli politics asif it's just Israel, it's just graphs
(16:07):
perfectly onto American politics, and sothey associate colored Jews with the Democratic Party,
which is totally wrong. It doesn'tmake sense in that context. So
that was like, that was oneexample of a piece that I just wrote
and then my next essay is actuallyit's about rape and sexual assault and what
(16:37):
it does, what it does tovictims, because I really do feel like
this is very personal, but Ireally feel like I didn't have the reading
material that I needed to understand whathad happened to me. And I have
friends who I have a friend whojust had a horrible experience, and I'm
(17:00):
telling her all of the things thatI needed to hear, But I wish
that I could give her something toread that she could reread every day that
would tell her all the things thatshe needs to hear. So that's the
kind of that's exactly a good exampleof the kind of thing that I choose
to write. I want to writethe thing that I know she and millions
(17:22):
like her need to read in orderto just get from A to B to
C and hopefully to normal. Shewas on the phone the other day,
we were talking and she said,how long did it take before you felt
normal again? And it's just sucha heartbreaking question, But it's a question
that so many women ask themselves.So I want to have an opportunity to
answer it in a way that willreach more people than I can just talk
(17:45):
to. I love how that youwere using your platform so very very responsibly.
Thank you. Really go out hereand change the world and put the
words out there that can change viewpoints and thoughts, and that's the beginning
of the real change in the world. Wow, I feel like you're a
(18:07):
responsible, grown literary adult. Iam, in any way, shape or
form, am I responsible grown literaryadults? Thank you? I try.
It was just on television, Like, so I wrote a poetry book about
cocktails. Let me show you howto make a cocktail your books? I
don't I know this is I alsohost podcasts, and so I'm not going
(18:29):
to try to interview you, butI'm just okay. So my next question
is, tell me about your podcasts. Oh no, Well, we kind
of transitioned into doing this thing thatI think is really fun where every month
we host this like public salon andthat anybody can come to. It's it
(18:49):
costs ten dollars for non subscribers.We're partnering with an organization called inter Intellect.
They're great, you've checked them out, you would love them. They
they host us on their platform,and so Liberties and Interintellect subscribe members get
free attendance, and so every monthI and one of our writers have a
(19:12):
salon where like for the first thirtyto forty five minutes of it, it's
just me and them talking, andthen for the rest of like the hour
hour and a half, everybody inthe salon can ask questions of either of
us and tell us what they thinkabout the subject. So it's a really
wonderful way of connecting with our members. I love it. We just had
(19:32):
one, the most recent one isthe most successful on like sixty something people
were in attendance on the zoom,which was really cool for me, And
it was with my colleague who isthe editor of the of the journal,
Leon Weasels here, and we weretalking about liberalism, which is the philosophical
and political tradition to which we arecommitted and just what are what are the
(19:55):
real values of liberalism, what dowe stand for, and how does it
inform the philosophy of the journal.And it was just so fun literally,
like I mean, people didn't stayup with the entire question and answer because
the event, like just the conversationwas like an hour, but there were
people. There were like fifty peoplewho were there for two hours talking to
us about liberalism. So it wasreally great. That was like so much
(20:19):
fun. Yeah, yeah, okay, that's amazing. Wow. It's like
a audio essay exactly. It's aninteractive audio essay. That is our podcast,
an interactive audio essay. First youhear an essay, then you asked
the writers. Excuse me, Ihave thoughts. I feel like so many
(20:41):
people want to do that when they'relistening to podcasts, they want to like
talk back. So this is theopportunity to do that. Oh I do
I definitely talk back, And thenquite honestly, quite a few times I
just had them on to let themknow what I thought. Okay, oh
I love that. Oh my god, what a good idea. I guess.
Excuse me, this is what Ithink. Listen. I love that.
(21:03):
That's a great way to go throughlife. Everyone have that attitude.
It is so bad. I waslike, I've done that to my favorite
authors too. I feel like thiscould have been improved. I really what
an iditor. This light is motioncensored, and so I always like,
(21:25):
I'm like, feel free to dothe same thing to my work. I
thoroughly understand and appreciate it. Andthey've done it like they do it and
they're like, yeah, I feellike this, this, and the minutes,
and they're like, I hope Ididn't hurt your feelings. I'm like,
I've been a published author since Iwas ten. I mean, I've
been ripping me a new one sinceI was ten years old. I don't
care. Started writing when you wereten? Did you publish poetry when you
were ten? Yes? That's socool? Where? Why? What?
(21:49):
Like? What like put that intoyour head? Where are you from?
I'm from Maryland. I'm in DCright now. Did you know that you
need that? Are you in Marylandnow? Yeah? I live in Annapolis
thirty minutes apart. Yeah, Iwas like, I could have drove odo
interview. You should come to ourevent that we're hosting next month. We're
(22:11):
hosting out that next month, we'redoing our first in person panel thing.
It's gonna be fun. You should. I'll sell you that. I mean,
you are currently on this podcast andI'm hosting it. Are you sure
I'm smart enough to attend? Absolutely? Listen. You've been a published author
since you were ten years old.You don't even get to make jokes like
that. It was kind of funnybecause sometimes like d being class and my
(22:36):
professor would be like I don't likethis. I don't think it would get
published. And I really wanted tobe like, sweetie, I've been published
longer than you've been thinking about beingpublished, but I didn't. I love
it. That's so great, Alright, it's true. Like because they were
like, I gotta published like eightyears ago, I'm like, it's money,
(22:56):
Yeah it is. I was thinkingabout that. I can tell me
wrong. You know, there's somany of my friends who were told by
professors that they weren't good writers.Like, thank god, no one cared.
I thank god nobody was like,oh, maybe I shouldn't be a
writer because this guy doesn't think thatI'm a good writer. Like I'm sure
(23:19):
there are people who just stopped becausebecause they got negative feedback. I kind
of use it as fuel. Gottarun on that. I've always said,
like I've said it like this sinceI have been published for so long.
I have been pitching the Big Fivesince I was eleven, And those rejection
(23:40):
letters can come back as a simpleword that says nope, yeah, and
at eleven, if you can learnhow to do that and then get up
the next day and write a newone, I ain't nobody gonna bother you,
you're like, I absolutely hate whatyou wrote. That's good. I'm
gonna write again tomorrow. You canhate that too. But it's like,
(24:02):
if you are in a position forpeople to be giving you negative criticism,
you're already accomplished a lot because peopleare reading your stuff. Like I was
just talking to a friend about thatwe have an idea for an organization,
and he was like, a lotof people are going to come after us
for this, and I was like, good, I hope. So if
no one's coming after you, thatmeans no one's heard of you exactly?
(24:26):
Is your respectful and nice to peopleexactly? And I mean you you're trying
to change the world. People aregoing to hate pieces of what you do
anyway, So that's right betted forgoing in the right direction, right the
best. It's like I get lettersfrom readers, and the best, even
like the most sympathetic ones are criticalbecause I write about things that people have
(24:48):
strong feelings about, so they're alwaysgoing to be things they disagree with,
even if they agree with like ninof what I wrote, the part that
they disagree with, it's going toreally animate them to write back to me
and explain to me what they thinkI got wrong because they care deeply about
the thing I wrote about. Imean, if you're not writing about if
you're not doing that and you're pickingthings that people don't care about, it's
(25:11):
kind of boring. Like what's thepoint. So if we think about essays
our thought pieces, so they shouldelicit emotions and enough emotions to have thoughts
and enough thoughts to have actions.And obviously the people who are writing you
have had emotions, thoughts and actions. That's what I think accomplished. Now
back to the back on track,because I feel like I'm on a soapbox.
(25:33):
I like it. Girl, youlook good on that soapbox. Oh
I'm gonna tell you. I don'thave on my heels, so I look
a little chubby on the bottom half. I pick my heels on on that
soapbox, I'm gonna look amazing.I believe that you're doing that soapbox a
favor wearing it. Okay, solet's go ahead and move on to like
the third question, which was actuallyyou had a question for me and I
(25:55):
would love to answer it. Great. What was the question? Well,
I asked you how you started writing, and I wanted to but I have
more questions like, I want toknow when you first you said that you
have twelve books? Right? Ihave eighteen altogether, yet eighteen? What
was the twelve? Was that?Twelve was poetry collection? Twelves that aren't
(26:15):
audiobooks? Or sixth that are?And twelve that aren't? Okay? Are
these are these books poetry collections orare they novels? What are they?
Most of them are poetry collections,some of them are novels. And when
did you write your first one firstnovel? When I was twelve? When
(26:37):
did you write your first poetry collection? Seventeen? My first poetry collection at
seventeen, and I got twelve ofthem published? Wow? Wow, So
you wrote your first novel at twelve? What was it? What was it
about? And did you show itto anybody? Who did you show it
(26:57):
to first? I showed it toJade first, my writing partner that's normally
here. Yes, I've known herwhen she was four years old. I
was why did I get too?Yeah? Jade is handling Frankfort stuff.
(27:18):
Okay, thanks Jared Frankfort book fair. Right, Yeah, there's a lot
of that, there's a whole Ohgod, that's so sweet of her.
Is she going to be there too. Yeah, yeah, she's going.
I'm I'm currently in class for biology. I have three biology classes that I'm
(27:40):
taking this semester, so I can'tdo frankfort this and that. Wow.
Oh yeah, I'm working on myfourth degree. What and what? What
is it? This one is adegree and I'm doing a dual degree is
actually biology and communication, so it'llbe fourth and fifth and then gets and
that'll be a six chess. Soyou hate school, I actually do.
(28:07):
But I woke up one morning duringright during COVID and decided that I wanted
to be a physician's assistant. Whybecause that before I became a writer,
I wanted I'm going to cut mostof this out. Okay, sorry,
I'll stop. Before I wanted tobe a writer, I wanted to be
a neural surgeon. I was fiveyears old. I always got stuck with
(28:30):
the books about the last person.I ate slow, so I always got
stuck with anomy books. And theanatomy books were for people who were in
fourth grade, and so I startedto learn how to because I'm reading it
like every day. So I starteda lot about anatomy and stuff to put
together. So by the time Iwas six, I could explain the stages
of pregnancy from like the cell splittingto the my tooses, to the to
(28:53):
the ball, to the zaigo tothe yeah, to the feet. I
could explain that by the time Iwas six CH's and then I fell in
love with the system, and soI decided I wanted to be a neurosurgeon.
And then at seven, so onesaid I have written the best thing
they had ever read, and theywere an adult, and I decided I
wanted to be a writer. Andthen at ten I got published. Crazy,
So what is what are the otherfive degrees? I have a degree
(29:19):
in biology, just the tiny babyone associates, we don't count that I
have a degree in business, andI have a degree in literature. I
have mostly I just did not applythe graduation for graduation and my degree in
creative writing, because who the heckis going to use a degree in creative
(29:40):
writing, right, So I'm goingfor a bachelor's and communications in biology so
that I can apply for the master'sprogram as a physician's assistant. Okay,
I'll stop grilling in with questions.Thank you. I actually don't mind.
I wish there were more writing questions. Sorry you feel like I'm accinating woman
(30:00):
as my as my professor said,He was like, I just want you
to know. This is the onlytime I did get my feelings. Are
you write pop poetry? You don'twrite real poetry? Oh my god,
dang, that really hurt my feelings. And then Jade was like, do
you know that's what we are?We're pop poets. So I knows that's
such a gross thing to say tosomething. July understand. But then I
(30:26):
was like, Hey, I'm theone that has the beach house off of
poetry yet out that's so mean.What an attitude. I own a beach
home because I write poetry. Youown a chair and a desk and all
coach and a grudge. Apparently good. Anyway, moving off, what would
(30:55):
we would discuss? Oh, canyou talk a little bit about the magazine?
And I feel like we covered thatquestion though, and like what are
the goals of the magazine? ButI feel like we really covered that question.
But let's just talk about the magazinein general. And you're gonna say
something interesting and I'm going to belike, wow, because this interview has
gone places I did not expect itto go, like Israel politics. Sorry,
(31:19):
I was like, she definitely isnot expecting me to go all the
way to the Middle East right now, because when you said politics of is
really politics, I'm a good God, that's a hard like and I ask,
so I'm doing like an encyclopedia thatwas just one long essay. Okay,
I know it was. That's theproblem with that subject. I mean,
okay, this is a good wayof talking about the journal broadly.
(31:42):
You know, the us is thatwe publish are about difficult subjects like Israeli
politics, but the writing is reallybeautiful, so it's matching. We have
the same standards stylistically for our writersas we do philosophically and politically and intellectually,
(32:05):
so it's all of a on parwith one another. So they're all
waited the same for us and shouldbe as beautiful as it is interesting and
as interesting as it is smart.And we have a lot of writers who
write for other major publications. Butthis is bragging a little bit. One
(32:30):
of my favorite things, probably myfavorite thing to hear from a writer is
that we're their favorite place to writefor because we want them. That's how
we That was like, when wehear that, we know we're doing something
right, that's really like the standardfor success. One standard for success for
me is just like, are thesewriters who are amazing and could be published
(32:52):
anywhere and are published everywhere, arethey coming back to us because they know
that we're going to understand this subjectand allow them to write about it in
a way that doesn't squish them,doesn't edit them out, you know,
other places, most of the reallywell known publications don't allow writers to sound
(33:14):
like themselves. They make them soundlike the house. And it's just like,
what is the point of that,Like why would you have why take
a talented writer and make them soundlike everybody else in your pages? And
which really is making them all soundlike you? And we never disrespect writers
by doing that, And that isa big part of our uditorial philosophy.
(33:37):
We are liberals, We are notconservatives, and we are not progressives,
so that is like a particular intellectualand political orientation. We do publish people
who don't identify as liberals. We'vepublished you know, Bernie supporters in our
pages, but nothing that we publish, nothing that we publish by them,
(33:57):
will be inconsistent with our values.So we'll definitely publish people who like you
know, if we got all ofour writers in a room together and we
ask them a question, like aquestion about abortion, they'd agree on ninety
nine percent of the stuff that they'dbe talking about. But the stuff that
they disagree about, they'd disagree aboutintensely. You know, we publish religious
(34:20):
people, and we published progressive people, and we publish people who take religion
very seriously and their religion very seriously, and we publish people who think that
religion is evil. But we wouldnever publish something that says that religion is
evil. So we give them therespect to allow them to appear in our
pages and to write what they believe, but not all that they believe,
(34:44):
and we would never force them tosay anything that they don't think. So,
for example, we have a socialistwriting for us, who is a
writer whom I respect a lot,who's writing for us about film, but
it's not going to be an essayadvancing socialism because we're not a socialist publication.
So yeah, that's a nutshell.Thank you. That's very very interesting,
(35:07):
and that I've never heard it saidso eloquantly, both maybe taking words
and this does not happen on mypodcast. I'm like, perfectly comfortable with
being both eloquent and elegant. That'smost of what I'm going for most of
the time. Great and you getsucceeding. Last question that I have for
(35:29):
you about writing today is what isentailed in the job of a managing editor.
Okay, So the other thing that'sinteresting about our publication is that we
are I wish I could show youa copy of the journal. Here is
an old copy. This is acouple of issues ago. But this is
(35:51):
what it looks like. This ishow long it is. This one's three
hundred and thirty pages. Most tothem are between most of them are about
three hundred and sixty three. Yeah, three hundred and sixty pages. And
we do that four times a year, so they're quite long. And we
have a staff of three. Soit's three people doing all of this four
(36:12):
times a year. Three So whatwe're doing on our budget. Yeah,
it's crazy. It's a lot ofwork. I handle all of the logistical
stuff from an editorial, from theeditorial end, as well as the actual
editing because my boss and I myeditor boss. So I have a publisher
who is my my like I don'tknow business boss, and I have the
(36:37):
editor in chief of the publication whois my editorial boss, and he and
I edit the pieces together, andhe does a lot of well, he
does a lot of the communication directlywith the writers, although I also communicate
directly with them. I also handleeverything like sending them out their contracts,
making sure their contracts are set inon time, you know, making sure
(36:59):
that everything is organized properly, makingsure that I have copies of all of
the issues and I can search themand send them out. So I both
get to do really fun things liketell Anna Balen that she can absolutely write
this piece on Mahler and reach outto a writer whose work I really admire
and ask them to write for us. And I also like get emails frantically
(37:22):
from people who can't figure out howto sign their contracts and you know,
don't or one you know, Iwas in I was in Spain last week
with my girlfriend and it was like, you know, a very romantic trip
we were taking together, and Igot this call from a writer who was
in Albania and hadn't gotten paid yetand he's living on a shoe string,
(37:43):
like very bohemian writer who literally hadyou know, some very small amount in
his account and needed to be wiredthe money right away, so I'm like
trying to and like he got themoney and then took a flight from Albania
to Madrid. Oh no, hewas in from Italy to Madrid to meet
us, which is kind of hilarious, like as soon as Yeah, so
that was funny, that kind ofthing. The things that I'm like stressed
(38:07):
about logistically are making for that everybodysends in their contracts. I keep track
of all of the completed pieces,so you know, we do say we
do like five rounds with the writerabout on a specific essay. I have
to have make sure that the piecethat is going into the final version of
the issue is the final version oftheir essay and not versions one through five.
(38:32):
That kind of thing, And yeah, that's what I do. So
where can we find out more informationabout you as a writer because you have
a book coming out when you finishwriting it. It's true, I don't
have a website, which is terrible. I really should have a website.
I do have Twitter and Instagram.I also paint These are mine my paintings.
(39:00):
Yes, so I have an Instagramcelest Marcus Art and my Twitter is
celest Marcus. I'm the one who'sdescribed as the managing editor of Liberties.
So you can definitely go there,but you should also go to Liberties Journal
dot com and subscribe because it iswonderful. Well, you'll have to take
care of my second follow up questionson Instagram Twitter, celest Marcus uh See
(39:23):
asked if she's selling any of thosepaintings, because I might actually want one.
She does sell the paintings. Therewe go. I thought that was
very important to know. Sorry,I forgot to say that. Sorry,
I always forget that I sell them. I do. I just got a
studio actually, so that's exciting.Up is Yeah, and also subscribe to
(39:46):
liberties and so you can now knowabout us. Hey, I'm well Nona
and one of the and I thoughtladies you could find out everything your ladies
are up to at www dot andI thought ladies dot com. And while
you're there, go a minute.Go ahead, while you're there, take
a moment and go to the middleof the page and see with the charities
(40:06):
that we probably support. We askthat you go ahead and give them support
too. That does not necessarily meanmoney. That could mean that you could
just give them knowledge in or someof your time. Come on, you
know the one that where they flyover the Ethiopia and build orphanages. They
need time more than they need moneyin your actual digging hands. Yeah,
try that one anyway. Remember thatwisdom is all around you if you're open
(40:29):
to finding it and accepting It's apiece of love. You guys from well
no, not in the Missing Jade. Oh yeah, thanks for listening.
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