Biographers in Conversation

Amy Reading's "The World She Edited: Katharine S. White at The New Yorker"

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In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Dr Amy Reading chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about her choices while crafting The World She Edited: Katharine S. White at The New Yorker, the biography of Katharine Sergeant White, the first fiction editor of The New Yorker, an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry.

Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode:

  • Amy Reading’s inspiration for crafting The World She Edited
  • How The World She Edited provides a long overdue corrective to the male-dominated lens through which America’s literary history during the 20th century and the rise of The New Yorker have been portrayed
  • How Amy portrayed Katharine’s challenges, including sexism, misogyny, paternalism and backhanded insults
  • The extent to which Amy interpreted Katharine’s correspondence with her authors
  • How Amy narrowed the biographical scope given that the ‘finding aid’ to Katharine’s archival collection runs to 800 pages
  • How Amy crafted lucid, elegant narrative, evoking the style Katharine infused throughout The New Yorker
  • Why Amy argued for the importance of Katharine’s forgotten work and made a larger argument about female readers as the drivers of literary culture.
    • ...more
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