Award-winning journalist and bestselling author Rachel Slade spoke to me about majoring in “New York,” killing her darlings, and the future of manufacturing in her latest book MAKING IT IN AMERICA.

Rachel Slade is an award-winning journalist and acclaimed author of Into the Raging Sea, a national bestseller, New York Times Notable Book, and winner of the Maine Literary Award for nonfiction.

Her latest work of nonfiction is Making It in America: The Almost Impossible Quest to Manufacture in the U.S.A. (And How It Got That Way). It is described as “a deeply personal and eye-opening journey into the fight to bring ethical manufacturing back to the U.S.”

A Publishers Weekly Top 10 Pick in Business and Economics, The Washington Post called it “Persuasively argue[d] . . . Slade’s book gives a granular sense of just how hard it is for business owners, particularly those in manufacturing, to do the right thing by their workers in America today.”

Rachel also spent a decade in the city magazine trenches at Boston—first as the design editor, ultimately as executive editor. Her work has appeared in publications including The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and Boston magazine.

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In this file Rachel Slade and I discussed:

Making a career transition from architecture to journalism

The intense research that went into her first book

Why she used Moby Dick as a story framework

Writing a Pandemic book

The two hats all writers wear

Smoking a cigar with Charles Dickens

And a lot more!

Show Notes:

rachelslade.net

Making It in America:The Almost Impossible Quest to Manufacture in the U.S.A. (And How It Got That Way) By Rachel Slade (Amazon)

Rachel Slade on Instagram

Kelton Reid on Twitter

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