Every debut writer wants to know the same thing: What will make someone pay attention to my book? I’m not just referring to an agent or editor; the people who come later in the publishing cycle can matter just as much to your book’s future. Reviewers, podcast producers, booksellers, book influencers (yeah, that’s officially a thing now), magazine editors… there’s a long list of gatekeepers who help decide which new voices to amplify, and whether yours will be one of them.
To explore this topic, I hosted a Q&A with India Lena González, senior editor at Poets & Writers Magazine, where she oversees several of the publication’s debut-author series, including “New Nonfiction” and “5 Over 50.” Her job gives her an unusually close view of how emerging writers get discovered, what makes a first book stand out, and which signals matter before an editor even starts reading.
During our conversation, we covered:
What India looks for when choosing debut nonfiction writers
Why the publicist’s pitch needs to sound like the author
How writers can become more discoverable before their book comes out
Why literary community matters more than most writers realize
How editors think about an author’s social media presence
What Poets & Writers’ 5 Over 50 series reveals about publishing later in life
Why authors shouldn’t panic if publicity doesn’t happen immediately around pub date
Below, you’ll find our full conversation, lightly edited for clarity and readability.
You can check out The New Nonfiction 2026 here, and Poets & Writers is also hosting a virtual reading and celebration with this year’s featured writers on Wednesday, September 23rd. If you’re curious about 5 Over 50, last year’s feature is available here; the 2026 edition will be published in a few weeks.
India Lena González Author Insider Q&A
Full Transcript
The conversation below has been lightly edited for clarity and readability.
Panio Gianopoulos: So India, how long have you been at Poets & Writers?
India Lena González: I’ve been at Poets & Writers for, I think, going on seven years now. So I started as a fellow and then worked my way up from there. So it’s been quite a while.
Panio Gianopoulos: And what would you say, like, not to put you on the spot, well, you’re kind of on the spot because you’re the guest, but what is your mission at Poets & Writers Magazine?
India Lena González: Yeah. So for Poets & Writers Magazine, our mission is to really democratize access to all aspects of how one can become a writer. So we have tons of databases for writers on the magazine side of things because we’re both a nonprofit and a magazine. So we have both aspects working together. We’re constantly looking to kind of uncover and reveal to writers how to get published, how to do this thing that’s called being a writer. What does that look like? It looks a million different ways depending on who you are, what you’re interested in. We’re interested in giving writers access to all these different databases for small presses. As you mentioned, there’s like our contest database, which I think is our most well-known feature for grants and awards. So people know how to submit, what to submit, what industry insiders are looking for. And then we also, of course, have series where we talk with published authors and you kind of get the insight of how their journey went and how they got to where they are today.
Panio Gianopoulos: Well, so you mentioned a series, but you do a lot of different things, right? You’ve got The New Nonfiction feature. You’ve got the Five Over 50 series. So let’s just start with The New Nonfiction feature because we are so many nonfiction writers here. When you put this together, how do you source it? How do you decide? I mean, I know I curate things for the Next Big Idea Club, but we’re pretty focused on certain genres of self-help and social science and business, whereas all nonfiction, that seems overwhelming. How do you choose?
India Lena González: Yes. So for The New Nonfiction, we’re focused specifically on creative nonfiction. So that helps to narrow the pool a great deal. And then on top of that, a lot of it is what publicists are sending in to us. And then it’s also research. So I try to even the playing field. Even if your publicist did not send your book, I want to make sure I’m looking at every possible option available to us. There are certain presses I’m always looking at. Social media is also a great way for me to find new voices. So it’s all of those things in one that we use to then source. And then from there, you kind of have your editorial decision making process, which we can get into as well in terms of what stands out versus other things.
Panio Gianopoulos: Yeah, let’s get into it right now because that’s super interesting. Yeah. You used the phrase “rise above the noise.” So what does that look like from an editorial perspective? Like what makes the debut stand out?
India Lena González: Yeah, for new nonfiction, my understanding of creative nonfiction and sort of the thesis statement that I believe it’s making as a genre is that you’re trying to make meaning of the world around you. And you’re putting yourself in context, which I’m stealing from one of our authors this year who was in the series and said that she learned this from her MFA teacher. But all of writing is putting yourself in context, specifically creative nonfiction. So when I’m reading these books, I’m looking to see what is the context that you’re placing yourself in. And how are you doing that? So what’s the framework for your story? And then more importantly, how are you telling that story? I’m really interested not just in does this story sound interesting, but also how do you uncover your inner and outer world? And how do you make meaning of what it means to be alive right now in today’s day and age? How do you make meaning of your childhood? How do you make meaning of your dreams in the future? All of that is important to see the nitty gritty and the authenticity of struggling through that. So when you see an author who’s really intelligently thinking through these problems and also has the heart, so both the head and the heart combined, that to me pulls me in as a reader and that makes me want to learn more. That makes me want to spotlight them because we’re looking for a connection. Ultimately, I think all readers want to connect with the author, especially for this genre. So the more that you can pull someone in and say, this is my world and this is how it feels to be me, the more I’m on board with your journey.
Panio Gianopoulos: Right. So I imagine this would really push, you said creative nonfiction, but it seems like memoir would really thrive in this kind of, with this rubric, right? Because it is so personal and it is so about context and intimacy and voice.
India Lena González: Yeah, memoir, anything that’s hybrid, creative nonfiction, and also essay collections. We never have enough of those, I feel. So I’m always looking for more essay collections, but there is that personal aspect to creative nonfiction, regardless of what the thing is within that. I think memoir specifically, it gets really personal. So when someone handles that with a deft hand and has the craft to tell a story that might not be easy to tell without falling into certain clichés or tropes, I’m looking at how many different angles into that topic they’re able to manage. And then what does it come out to in the end? For this year’s feature, we have a wonderful hybrid memoir from Nita Noveno, Mud on the Moon. She combines family photographs with history and personal asides to the reader that are like letters. And then she imagines her father’s coming to America. It’s all these different components together. So then in those hybrid forms, you’re looking for like, how well do you braid together all these different sources that you’re pulling from? in order to make something that works well overall and has like a very carefully tended to ecosystem as a book.
Panio Gianopoulos: Well, it’s nice that you’re, nice is a weak word, but it’s reassuring that you’re championing experimental work to some degree, right? Where they’re taking formal chances. And because it does seem like... So much of publishing has gotten more conservative, right? Everybody is nervous to take a risk. They want a known thing and people aren’t really being rewarded. I will say for my years being a book editor, when somebody would submit a personal essay collection, we’d think like, oh God, this is just going to languish in the bookstore. Like that part of the bookstore, like good luck. So you always wanted it to be like, there were certain sections which were like death for a book. And one was like the personal essay section, unless you were like David Sedaris, right? Right. And then it was like comedy was terrible. Like nobody’s going to buy your book there. So you’re always trying to like travel kind of sucked. So you’re trying to like steer them away. And to your point about having like a theme, we would try and move it away from like personal essays to like, oh no, this is a book about something else. We can put it in more general nonfiction. So it’s, it is heartening to know that you’re like, actually, because there are great personal essay collections.
India Lena González: Yeah, I think because we’re editors—and I don’t work at a press—I have no interest in the bottom line for a book. So I kind of have the freedom of just taking in the book for what it is and looking at it on a craft level. I think because we have such a literary focus, it always is about the quality. So I’m not thinking about an author’s platform, not even necessarily their bio. I mean, honestly, I take that information in, but unlike an agent or an editor you’d work at in the press, I don’t have any interest in selling it. My interest is just in how well written is this book? How much does it move me as a reader? And then I think that good writing wins in the end, at least in terms of like our editorial approach for this series.
Panio Gianopoulos: Thank God. Okay. It’s always nice to hear when someone’s like, I just like good writing. So let’s talk about emerging writers, right? New writers, first books coming out. So what is, have you noticed, like, are there any patterns or certain things? And this is a very general question, but like certain things you notice, like, okay, this is getting them attention because you mentioned, you know, you find these things. What have you noticed?
India Lena González: So I will say that the publicist matters, not in terms of who they are, but just how they pitch your book to any place for a review. If the way that they’re pitching it or the framework that they’re using doesn’t actually work well with the way that the book has been written, then there’s a discrepancy that doesn’t really call to me. It kind of actually makes me not want to read the book. So when I’m looking at the pitch, if I get a pitch email, I’m looking at the language that the publicist is using. I want it to match what’s on the inside of the book so that the way that you’re even telling me the synopsis of the story, it should match what I would get when I open up the book so I can get a sense of what that author’s tone is like and how they’re actually going to relay their message, not just the content. So I think sometimes for nonfiction, it’s just like, well, here’s the story. But I also want to know how the author is going to tell that story to me because that’s going to make me either buy into it or look elsewhere. So that’s important. I’m also looking at if I’m finding it through research online or even through social media, I’m looking at the synopsis that’s on the back of the book. So like that blurb, that copy. If that also doesn’t speak to or like resonate with what the author would write themselves, then that for me turns me off because it doesn’t give me another way into it. So there’s like layers to it before I would even read a PDF or necessarily open up a book. There’s like a little bit of a criteria there.
India Lena González: Did the publicist get your voice right in terms of how they presented you? Great. You might want to have that conversation with them to be like, how are you pitching the book? What’s the framework? What are you leading with? And then outside of that, just in terms of what’s on the outside of the book, does that also speak to what you have actually written? And I think maybe having some kind of creative control over that or conversation around that would be helpful so that it really is representing you as authentically as possible.
Panio Gianopoulos: Well, that’s incredibly interesting to hear because I think a lot of times authors will defer to their publicist, right? They’ll think, okay, well, she or he knows what they’re doing. This is just my book. I’m going to let them present it this way. But what you’re saying essentially is it really does have to represent your voice and your approach. It’s not enough just to say this is a book about the trials of motherhood. You’ve got to be really more specific to the voice.
India Lena González: Yeah, and I think that some publicists are better at doing that innately than others. So you don’t really know, right, how the publicist that you have as an author. But I think that at least having that conversation or asking like, hey, what does that pitch email look like just out of curiosity or starting to open up that conversation would be helpful because if you have a great publicist who really catches on your tone and is able to pick that up and then transfer that, wonderful. But if you don’t, I don’t think there’s any harm in being like, Maybe we can slightly rework this or at least try to make sure that it’s a fair representation because I want to care about your book. So if the publicist is just giving me pure content, but there’s no way in to say why I should care about your interpretation of said event, then for me, it’s hard to make that connection as a potential reader.
Panio Gianopoulos: Chris, did you have a question?
Chris: I did. And India, thank you. You basically answered it. So well. It’s true: my publicist comes from PRH, Rodale, and I have been as a first time and maybe only time author hesitant. I’ve asked a little bit about how she’s pitching it. I really don’t know. So and even the press release when I saw it, well, it had part of my name misspelled. And several other things that were in error or repetitious and things like that. So I guess you’re giving me a bit of the permission or strength to ask to see the pitch. I have been hesitant thinking they know what they’re doing. But having done this in the arts myself for many years, I know what that means. And I know that you have to know both who you’re speaking to and what you’re speaking about. So thank you for that. I’m still underwater. Thanks.
India Lena González: Of course, I understand. And also it’s like, no one’s going to know the content of the book better than the author. So the publicist will know how to angle it, but they also don’t know your world the way that you do. So in my mind, there’s no harm in at least being clear about your world. And sometimes the publicist reads the book all the way through. Sometimes maybe they don’t, depending on what’s on their plate. So we have to be reasonable in terms of like, don’t expect them to know you the way that you know you. And so I think that there can be some diplomatic way of like working through to make sure that you come across in that pitch more than the general idea of let me sell this to you.
Chris: And my book is about letter writing. So the aspect of communication is the bread and butter of it. So thank you.
Panio Gianopoulos: That’s a great question. So we’re talking now about people with books, right? But you mentioned you scour pretty far and wide to find things. So say I’m an unpublished writer or I have a book coming out, but maybe down the line. Is there any advice you could give me as far as ways to increase the odds that someone like you would eventually notice my work? Where would I focus? Is it Substack? Is it personal blogs? Is it literary journals? What do you recommend?
India Lena González: Yeah, I think Substack is great for like building that platform for people to get a sense of who you are and what that book is going to be about. For me personally, I think just because my generation is social media. So if you like reach out and get my attention and your book is there, then I’m looking at it. That’s something for sure. Those are the main ways. I also think it’s important to have a good community because I’m also, when I work with authors, I also then see who their friends are. I see who they’re hanging out with, who they’re going on retreats with, all these things. And if I see that you’re already kind of vetted by someone I’ve worked with before, I’m like, oh yeah, they’re in the same network. This is a person that I could work with easily. And so I think having a good community, a good literary community, not for the sake of necessarily someone seeing you, but just for the sake of building people who are in your corner who can vouch for you, that I think always comes back around. Because if I can be in conversation and I’m wondering about an author and someone can speak to who that person is, then that gives that kind of like personal approval of, okay, this might be someone that I want to look into further and things of that sort.
Panio Gianopoulos: Mm-hmm. It is remarkable how many things happen because a friend recommends you. I do a feature, 21 Questions, and one of the questions is, how did you find your agent? And I swear, I’ve not run the data, but 90 percent of them say ‘“Oh, my writer friend recommended me to...” Everybody seems to find their agent that way. But it makes sense because... There’s just so many people and you want to vet them a little bit. It’s like, okay, well, I don’t know if the writing’s any good, but I know at least this person’s not a total a-hole (presumably).
India Lena González: Yeah, I think from my end, I’m also looking at the personality of the person before I’m choosing. Because, you know, for something like this series, you have five slots, but you have so many writers out there. And at a certain point in time, everyone is equally talented in terms of like what they bring to the page. So then you’re looking for like, what’s the extra thing that stands out. And I’m personally invested in, will you be easy for me to work with? Because I have a lot to manage and it’s already going to be back and forth. I want to know that I’m investing in someone who will work well with me and you can’t always guess that. So sometimes I will look up the author on YouTube and see if you’ve done a talk or anything like that to see like, what did they sound like? How gracious are they to somebody else? I’ll look at if you’re on social media, what are the captions for your posts? Like I’m trying to gather some more personal data to make a decision if it’s between two people and it’s really hard. To be like who will be a person that will be the easiest person to work with and I think will also write an essay for a magazine that will be helpful for our readers and not just self-serving and just in terms of promotion but will also be like really showing other writers how you got to where you are, the struggles that you had to overcome and how that book came to be. If I feel that you can do that then that’s pretty much a shoo-in for sure.
Panio Gianopoulos: I’m a little scared because I really should go back to my social media. I feel like I post funny pictures of cats and you’d be like, this guy is not for real.
India Lena González: I love that stuff. I’m all about a person being a person. If someone’s overly professional on social media, it’s also a red flag for me. So I love to see what their interests are. It doesn’t have to be my interests. I just want to see that you’re passionate about something. But you’re really looking to be like, is this person going to make me have to work overtime or do I feel like this could be a smooth process? And sometimes I’ve guessed correctly and sometimes I’ve guessed incorrectly. And then you’re stuck with what you’re stuck with and you just kind of push through it. And in the end, it always evens out. But, you know, there are sometimes bumps in the road for sure.
Panio Gianopoulos: Stacey, your question?
Stacey: Yeah. Hi, India. I’m just curious, like, what does a normal day look like for you at work?
India Lena González: Yeah, that’s a great question. So I, as a senior editor, I manage all of our debut author series. And so that goes within each different issue that we have of the six issues that we have in a year. Right now we have four debut author series for poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction. And then as was mentioned earlier, we have our Five Over 50 series, which is for writers who are debuting after the age of 50. At any given point in time, I’m working on one of those series. And if I’m not doing that, then I’m working with authors for our online series. So a lot of emailing, a lot of receiving pitch emails, a lot of editing authors that I’m working with or reading a lot of books, trying to make decisions like that, and then speaking with the editor in chief about that, as well as hosting events. I do events for these authors as well. So things of that sort. It just depends on what part of the production cycle we’re in. And then, of course, like as we get closer to publishing an issue, we’re all reading the book through, we’re editing each other’s work, we’re handling any last-minute details like that.
Stacey: Thank you. That’s great.
Panio Gianopoulos: You mentioned the Five Over 50 series, which I think is great. I just turned 50 last year or so. Like finally, I know every time I would turn a new decade, like I turned 30 and I’d be like, oh, I’m not doing that. Like 10 under 30, missed that one. And then 40, I’m like, oh, missed 40 under 40. So I was like, all right, I got another shot. Five over 50. There’s no cap. I like the upside. So what inspired it and how long have you been doing that?
India Lena González: So I believe that this year is the 11th year that we’ve done Five Over 50. So last year was our full decade and we did like a full retrospective where we looked back on like all the 50 writers we had included thus far. So yeah, we’ve been doing it for a while. It’s one of the later series that we added, but really it falls in line with our belief that there is no expiration date on a dream. And we also don’t believe that we should put an age cap on like when you reach your goal of first publishing a book. And so there’s so much beauty and wisdom to be learned by listening to and reading these essays by these authors. And they really talk about their whole life journey that got them to where they are today. And for me personally, I’m not 50, but just in starting the series and being able to have the privilege of working on it, it was something that was really like, it’s such a gift for me to be able to work with these writers and then to see what they have to say about the life that they have lived and how they got where they are. And the interesting thing is that no one ever wishes that they had published earlier. Some people think that time is a necessary evil, but most think it really is a gift. I think of it like making a stew: the longer it sits, the tastier it is, because you get all these different flavors. I think of a book similarly. Life has ebbs and flows and sometimes you have to focus on family or you have to focus on job and income. And so I think it’s unrealistic to believe that at 25, we can all drop everything and write the next best book. And then that can be your entire career. So when you hear people that have like spent time being parents, they’ve spent time focusing on like completely different communities and really offering themselves to those things. When they do come to writing a book, the quality is much better. There’s like the maturity to it is just nothing like it. Emotional maturity, that sort of understanding of how the world works. And they all say that time, even though they didn’t want it necessarily, it was the best gift because that was the thing that like now they finally have something to say. And the urgency to saying that is really felt when you read these books. So I think it’s like a great, I think more people should do that. The older the better—as close to 100 as you can get, really. That would be great. We’re always like, can you get a 70, 80, 90-year-old in there? That would be wonderful. So yeah, I think it’s really wonderful to spotlight that because there’s so much we can learn when you do debut when you’re older. Whereas sometimes when I’m working with people who debut and they are younger, they may have less to say. It may be a great book,bBut if you’re really looking to learn something from them, you could still see and hear the youth and the ego and the things like that doesn’t serve anyone outside of them. So I think that reading that series in particular, just for me as a reader of it, has been really, really great. And really heartening.
Panio Gianopoulos: Right. Yeah, that’s fascinating. I remember when I was like 25 and I finished my first novel and I was going to try to sell it. And I was having lunch with this author who was, I don’t know, 50 or something. And I told him very excitedly [about my novel]… And he said, yeah, you know, I think it’s hard to write a good novel if you’re under 30 or 35. You just haven’t lived enough. And I was so indignant. I was like, what are you talking about? You don’t know anything! It’s great! But now I understand his point in the sense of, like, you can certainly write a good, exciting novel when you’re young, but it’s [rarely] about emotional depth. It’s usually something else. Whereas someone who’s lived through some stuff and gotten kicked in the teeth a little bit and dealt with everything—you feel it. I love reading books where you’re like, wow, this author, she has had a full life. There’s a lot to draw from here. Whereas poetry, I think you can get away with being young. It’s more abstract. You can have great poetry. Knock that out when you’re 15 if you want. Well, maybe not 15. But novels, creative nonfiction, I think a little older is better.
India Lena González: Yeah. I mean, just prose in general, you have a lot more language that you’re working with. So there’s a lot more mistakes that can be made. There’s a lot more that you cannot manage well. So I think that when you have many years of experience in different professions that you’re pulling from and different things you’ve done outside of writing, all of that shows up on the page, even if you don’t think that it does, you can still feel like, for instance, someone I recently worked with, they spent a long time representing underprivileged people in court and that level of care for someone’s story that’s not your own and it comes from a background that’s completely different from your own. That shows up in her fiction writing, and she could not have done that if she was younger. It’s because you’ve spent years dedicated to other people and their livelihood that by the time you focus on telling stories that are coming from you, all of a sudden it’s very worldly, it’s expansive, and you can really feel the humanity underneath it because that’s what life, I think, really pulls up. The more you live, in my experience, the more you have to really come to the table with a lot more humanity.
Panio Gianopoulos: Yeah, absolutely. And to build on that, I find that, and maybe I’m just embarrassing myself, but when I was younger, you know, I was so wrapped up in this idea of like, I want to be a writer, I want to write books. And it’s almost like you get it backwards, right? You may want the experience, but the book itself is really what needs to come into existence. And I feel like the older you get, the more you’re like, oh, actually, this is not the book I want to write. The book I want to write, it can totally surprise you. It can be something completely different or something that comes from your own experience. Whereas sometimes I think writers, young writers, force themselves like, okay, I need to write a book. I need to write a novel. I need to write this. So they force it and it can be perfectly fine. But there’s a difference between a book you want to write and a book you need to write. And I feel like you can read that. You feel that on the page as a reader. You’re like, wow, she had to get the story out. The story was burning inside of her. And just as a reader, I honestly do feel like I can tell a difference.
India Lena González: Yeah. Yes, you can absolutely tell a difference. Agreed.
Panio Gianopoulos: Chris, questions?
Chris: Well, on that, then India, we’ll have two questions for you. The first is the longer one, but I’ll end with the short one. The longer one is, well, how did you, given what Panio just said, how did you come to writing? What’s on your mind? What’s on your desk? And my very short question, which I hope you’ll tell, is your Instagram handle because it’s not clear.
India Lena González: Yeah, absolutely. So how I came to writing was first through loving to read growing up. My mom had a journalism degree, so she was really not hard on me and my sister, but she was really clear about like articulating yourself clearly in an essay for school. And she really painstakingly like worked with us to make sure that we’re writing to the best of our ability. And from that, my love of writing grew. It became really fun to write these creative pieces for English class I majored in writing for undergrad, got an MFA in it, and then continued in the community like this as an editor, which I’ve really enjoyed being an editor outside of being a writer. The way that works together, the marriage of the two has been really fulfilling for me. So that’s kind of how I come to it. What’s on my desk right now are a lot of poetry books because I’m focusing on our debut poets selection, which is coming up. So way too many poetry books, almost 100 is what’s on my desk. That’s on my mind too. Yeah, we have 10 slots for debut poets, which is more than the other series. The others are just five. So it’s an even larger pool to pick from. So that’s what’s on my mind for the next week or two. And then my Instagram handle. Yes, it is. It’s your girl India. @itsyagurlindia. Wanted to keep it very casual. Yep.
Panio Gianopoulos: So this is more of a broader kind of industry question, but a lot of times we talk about different formats of publishing, right? Hybrid publishing has become very popular, and self-publishing happens. At Poets & Writers, do you consider hybrid publishing? Do you consider self-published books, or is it only traditional publishing that you guys check out?
India Lena González: Only traditional publishing. Although we do have, we’ve talked about hybrid publishing and self-publishing in certain articles. When we’re looking for books to cover, we’re looking at books that have gone through a traditional publisher only because that helps manage the quality of the content for us. So if we were to have a wider playing field, that would be a little bit harder to manage all of those books. But yes, traditional publishing.
Panio Gianopoulos: And do you find that, I guess... Let me try to rephrase this. Do you think that there’s a point at which you would change that policy or you just think we want it vetted to some degree? There’s just too many options. So we’re just going to stick with traditional.
India Lena González: You know, maybe. I think everything changes over time, right? Because of the industry and where it’s going. I could for sure see that. But that hasn’t been something that we’ve spoken about in great detail. It’s just something that we abide by for right now. So I think that, you know, should things change, for sure. But, um, I think that self-publishing is a wonderful way to get published if you don’t want to wait on a publisher to bet on you. I also think that it requires a lot of resources too. So I often give talks for poets and writers where a lot of writers are asking about self-publishing, especially for poetry and things of that sort. So we do have those discussions about the pros and cons of what it could be to be self-published versus to wait for a traditional publisher. And I think either way, it’s great. It’s just a matter of timeline, how quickly you want to get something out. And if you have the financial resources and the time to really commit to what that involves, which is also a lot to ask of someone.
Panio Gianopoulos: Right. And also you mentioned a real interest in more sort of experimentation on the page, especially in narrative nonfiction. And yet there’s a kind of tension there because a lot of publishers don’t want to take risks. Like, what the hell? There’s a recipe in this? There’s like a letter to your dead mom? Like, I thought this was a book about this. So how do you reconcile that? Is it just a lot of indie presses or university presses?
India Lena González: Yeah. Yeah, that’s exactly how I reconcile it. A lot of indie presses that do both like poetry and prose, they have the most experimental nonfiction, in my opinion. And it’s still because when you are experimenting to that extent, it can go wrong really quickly. There can be too much that you’re trying to manage in one go. So when you do have an editor that you’re working with, who is able to really rein that in for you, then by the time I get to a book that is highly experimental, it has already been shaped in a way that really works for that storytelling. And it’s already been worked through with someone else. So all I have to do is say like, love the experiment, see how it’s operating, totally stand by it. Let’s promote it as opposed to kind of sitting there wondering like, oh, but if you have like one more set of eyes, maybe you could have made this through line a little bit clearer. And, you know, if you’re going to go experimental, I think it has to be really crisp in the way that it’s done. And it requires an even greater editorial eye, which is something you really want to have. If you’re doing more traditional writing, there may be more leeway. But smaller presses like Sarabande Books and Red Hen Press come to mind. They publish really experimental work and they are very open in that regard. And so I find that there’s no shortage of kind of like weird nonfiction out there. If you go to the smaller places, which we like to do, we don’t just like to do big five. I like to have a good mix of them. So it’s like smaller with the big five for sure.
Panio Gianopoulos: Nikki, you have a question?
Nikki: Yeah, I’ve heard rumors of a poetry renaissance happening, and I’m curious what’s happening with sales of poetry, if you have any insight into if this is actually a growing, you know, area for books and collections.
India Lena González: Yeah, that’s a great question. I wish I had an answer for you. From my perspective, it seems that like poetry, just in terms of like when I’m collecting data every year for debut poets, it really is a booming business. It has not died down at all. I felt differently about other genres as I’m collecting data throughout the years where numbers change and things like that. But I think that because a lot of poets go through these smaller presses and there’s so many of them, I know that a lot are shutting down because of NEA grants and all the stuff like that, for sure. But I have found that the numbers of poetry collections, they’re still there. People are still reading it. And I still think that maybe because it is such a free form and such an authentic form for self-expression, and given the time period that we’re living in now, I think it’s maybe speaking to people in a way that perhaps it wasn’t before where we maybe took it for granted. So I’m personally always super excited by poetry and what’s out there. And I feel there is no shortage of poets. I feel that everyone’s still coming up and growing and blossoming on their own time, which is nice to see.
Nikki: Yeah, I have a suspicion that as our attention spans shorten that it’s like our attention span is now landing on the form of poetry, which just makes me happy. So, yeah.
India Lena González: Yeah, I love to hear that. I always feel like sometimes people are turned off because of the abstract quality of it. And people don’t seem to want to think deeply anymore these days. They like that kind of like TikTok video and then move on. So I think maybe form is a way in for people to enjoy poetry, the shortness of it. And then you can like work through the difficulty of how layered it is in that way as well.
Panio Gianopoulos: I think people are often intimidated by poetry in the sense of they feel overwhelmed. I have friends who will say like, oh yeah, I don’t know who to read. Like all they’ve done is like read Robert Frost in high school. Right. And then I’ll say, oh, you should read, you know, I usually like the, for me, the gateway drug for poetry is I usually give them Mary Oliver. I feel like she is like, you get her and then people like, wow, she’s amazing. And then you’re like, okay, well, here’s, here’s a little bit of this. Here’s, you know, um, Then you can sort of sneak it in. Or Neruda. Neruda’s a great one. You can get people in Neruda. And sometimes Rilke, if you have a more like philosophical, spiritual friend. And Rumi, I think those are kind of reliable, soft entries. And then you can start throwing the more interesting stuff at that. Not more interesting. I mean, they’re all legends for a reason.
Audience member: I would add Billy Collins to your list. I think he’s accessible.
Panio Gianopoulos: Oh, yeah. Yeah, that’s a good one. I would say Charles Simic I was really into for a while. And then I kind of burned out. But... But yeah, he’s got some really good stuff. The funny thing about poetry, though, is the short attention span idea, which you mentioned, I hope that’s true. I feel like every decade somebody’s like, hey, everyone’s attention span is shrinking. Now short story collections are going to be great. And as a short story writer, I’m like, yeah, and then they don’t. They don’t sell. And I was like, what the hell, guys? You can’t even pay attention. Read a short story. And I don’t know what it is about short stories, but maybe poetry’s got a shot because it’s just so short. You’re not even committing 20 minutes. You’re committing like 45 seconds to a poem. I love poetry, so I hope so. I hope that’s true. I also love short story collections, so I’m always waiting for them, you know, I think maybe because it’s like the different world building. I think sometimes like a novel because you just stay in one world and then you’re kind of on autopilot. You don’t have to relearn the world, which is why poetry and short story collections is hard for some people because every page you have to relearn something new. You can’t take it for granted. And so I love a short story collection and I wish that we lived in a world where they were championed as much as novels because I think there’s something so delicious about that short form and you dip in and then you dip out and you can build a whole world but focus on different characters or different angles. I think there’s so much liberty and freedom that you don’t get in a novel. You have to stick with something. From a poetry background, I don’t want to stick with anything. I want to keep moving. So I’m always like, you know, anytime you can shift gears, it also shows writers or readers out there what more you can do outside of that one vein, which is cool. Right. And short stories, you can experiment as a writer in a way that you don’t always want to as a novelist because something can work for 14 pages. It’s not going to work for 300 pages. Like that book, Joshua Ferris, was a big bestseller called Then We Came to the End. It’s like 20 years ago. Super interesting, super fun. But I tapped out after like 150 pages. Like I got it. First-person plural. You know, it was smart, and it was relentless and it was supposed to be, but I just thought this would be an amazing short story. I don’t really need to read the whole book. Obviously, you know, hundreds of thousands of people did. So props to Josh, but I think, you know, short stories, you can just take a chance. You can do something totally weird and abstract for eight pages. You can have it be, you know, text exchanges. You can have it be, you know, mixed media. But as an author, I don’t know that I want to commit two years to something highly experimental or three years. I wrote this novel that’s told from like an aquarium’s point of view of a bunch of fish. But like, good luck selling that. But you know, you write like a weird, quirky story in eight pages and you can make it work. So on the writer’s side, I’m always championing short stories.
India Lena González: For sure, yeah. I love the risk-taking. I think what wins ultimately in terms of numbers and sales is always the books that are more commercially successful, the ones that are written in a more traditional vein that anyone can dip into and out of without having to put any pressure on the reader to really decipher anything. And that totally is what it is. And there is an audience for that. And I respect that. And, you know, I work with that. But I think I’m, you know, ultimately what stands the test of time for me are the people that are more on the outside, the people that aren’t really in it to make that high amount of money, but are really in it to tell a story in the most authentic way possible. And for me personally, as an editor, that is what excites me when I see someone being true to who they are without, you know, buying into there’s one way to write a book. and that there’s one successful way to do it. Like, I want to see you really write a story in a way that your parents told you stories as a kid. Because I think that’s also like, it’s cultural, it’s different. We all grow up talking differently in our households. And so when you hear your grandparents tell a story, then that kind of rhythm of it or what you focus on in the story is different. And I wish that writing programs didn’t always beat that individuality out of people, but we were able to maintain and accept and respect each other’s differences in terms of how we come to storytelling. And when I see someone commit to storytelling that’s true to them or their people, that for me is a huge win because it definitely takes courage to do that. We know that. I think that’s where you learn the most as a reader is when people with different backgrounds and different stories come. And they say, look, this is how I tell a story. Listen to the way that I use language. And again, it’s that poetry background for me. How do you use language? There’s currency in that. And if you’re just using it really flatly in the way that everyone does, that doesn’t pop for me as a reader. But if you’re really working with language and you’re pulling or you’re pushing it and you’re doing things and you’re putting pressure on each word, even with prose, which I know is a lot harder because there’s so much content to deal with. At least find your particular way of writing. Then your voice shines and then I can’t forget you. So then just in terms of also like cutting through the noise, if you make yourself unforgettable in that way, and I really feel your fingerprint on the page, then it will linger with me regardless of whether or not I personally like it. That’s probably a book that will still get chosen because objectively it has something different to offer. And I’m always looking for different, not same old, same old.
Panio Gianopoulos: Well, that’s a wonderful argument against AI-assisted text. I did want to ask you, do you run into that where you think like this is AI-generated or this is probably, I mean, I guess at the point that you’re looking at things are already finished and published, so maybe not. But I am curious about that because the idea behind, you know, AI is it picks words statistically, I was just talking to a friend about it, who worked at Google, and he’s like, yeah, AI picks the statistically most likely next word. So every single time it’s familiar. Which is the most boring kind of writing. ‘Oh, great, another version of a thing I’ve read a thousand times.’
So that gives me hope. AI just takes away all the magic out of things. It’s like a super literal boring friend with no sense of humor... I really don’t get it. And I don’t understand when people generate AI stories and then they submit them in contests. Just on the principle of pride. What are you submitting? You didn’t write it. It’s like hiring someone to run a race for you. And you’re like, look, I got it. Well, you didn’t. You didn’t run it.
India Lena González: Yeah, I’m in total agreement. You know, very anti-AI. I think as we’re talking about creative writing, I just don’t understand the use of it within creative writing. The whole point is to have the individual first and foremost lead us through something. So relying on something that’s not human to be the engine for that. It feels very counterintuitive to me, like you said, because I’m at the later stage of like receiving a book that’s already been vetted or gone through a long process. I don’t encounter any like, oh, that seems like it’s written by AI. But when we are working with authors to write essays for us, that’s definitely a clause we have in the contract that can’t have any AI assistance. And that’s also something that we are checking for and you’re reading for to see like, does this sentence construction seem like it’s written by an individual or does it seem a little more general and things of that sort. But we also know that like even the process of checking AI using all these different resources, it’s not really up to snuff. One site might say, yes, AI was used for that. Another site might say no. So at the end of the day, you also kind of have to take the author at their word if you do choose to be like, okay, why lie about something like that or why even utilize something like that in this field and in this industry? It feels morally wrong to me, but that’s just my personal point of view.
Panio Gianopoulos: Stacey, you’ve been sitting on a question for a while.
Stacey: Oh, thank you. I have a question that’s both selfish and broader. So selfishly, I’m thinking, oh, my book’s coming out on October 20th. I have to check and see if my publicist pitched you. So I have to do that. But then all of a sudden, I got nervous and I thought, oh my gosh, what if it’s too late? And I think that nervousness speaks to a broader thing that I’ve been feeling about the publishing industry is that there’s so much emphasis on the pub date or the debut author. I just feel like that’s a little unfair. So I love that, like, for example, that you’re looking at people over 50, because I’m over 50, but, you know, and I feel like poets and writers are taking a longer view of things. I don’t know, maybe that’s just the impression I got from you, but I just, if you could just speak to that, like, that rush, like everything has to be around pub date. Everything has to be around like your first time coming out. And it puts a lot of pressure. And it also feels like unreasonable since like the best, the books that make publishers money are the backlist books, not the frontlist. So yeah, so those are all my questions. Thank you.
India Lena González: Well, firstly, congratulations on the book coming out in October. I love that. And please be sure that your publicist pitched us.
Stacey: I will do that.
India Lena González: Yeah. Yeah, you know, so it’s hard. So it’s different when we’re dealing with like the print magazine versus our online content. We have a lot more leeway for online just in terms of like, you know, being honest. So for print, we’re looking for that time peg of like whatever the issue is, making sure that the pub date for that book is around the same time. And then, of course, we also do shed light on authors who are not just debut authors, but we have those series to continue to shed light on writers. I think there’s a lot of importance placed on the idea that, for your debut, you really have to get everything in when you can, and it has to be all this, you know, and all that prep that goes into it, and there’s so much you don’t know as an author. You know how to write a book, but no one tells you about the business side of it and how it works. And so for instance, like for print, you need like a six month lead time before we know about a book in order for it to be in that issue. Because right now we’re working on January/February, just to show you how far in advance. I think sometimes authors don’t know that intuitively. Some publicists do. The good ones do. But sometimes they also will pitch and be like, oh, this book is coming out next week. What do you think? Let’s do an interview. And you’re like, it’s coming out next week. That’s not going to work for print, right? I think it’s our online series where there is not always a time peg on that. So if we just really love the book and we’re like, how can we still shed light on it? There are so many other avenues that we can give an author to share their experience. It just wouldn’t look the same as it would in print necessarily. That’s the beauty of online is that like you can pick up a book at any time and say, hey, I love it. And so for me personally, I work on our writer’s recommend series, which is a really sweet series. It’s like every two weeks we have a writer that’s in any genre and they just write about like a recommendation for how to get back into writing if you have writer’s block or how to turn away from writing to give yourself a break. And it’s like really short essays that I think are just like really good. Little meals to eat if you’re reading it to be like, oh, this person does wood carving or this person takes long walks and then thinks through their book while they’re doing that. Like there’s all these different, I’ve read like so many different writers’ versions of like what to do or what to do away from writing that is really helpful. And for that, there’s zero time peg. So it could literally even be a book that’s now coming out in paperback. And if I’m like, hey, we didn’t do it in hardcover, but I really love it now, we can do that. And I love that freedom of it. And then also like, There are also opportunities in our magazine, because we’re not just promoting the writers, but we’re also doing essays and they’re writing content for us that doesn’t even have to do with the books, but just around ideas of like what it means to be in the literary world and what you come up against. If you ever have an idea for an essay that you want to pitch that’s somewhat related to the book, but also just like general knowledge for other readers to keep in mind or something that people have always been wondering, but no one really taps into. We have that avenue for writers as well to be able to like share your story and then still get your book in your byline in there without it having to be so time pegged. So there are different ways for us in particular, but I do wish in general that debut writers didn’t feel all that anxiety of like, if I don’t get all the publicity now, then it will never happen because I know that like, you can also like, in my personal experience with my own publishing journey, like three years after my book came out, that’s when I got the biggest publicity for it. And it wasn’t anyone pushing it. It was just the book starts falling on people’s laps magically and then start reading. And then, from there, people respond. So I also want to say: don’t worry about like right now, right now, like it doesn’t have to be this fall. I think some of the best things that can and will happen for you might happen like many months or even years down the line and you won’t even see it happening. But I think it’s just the way that it works is like once the book is out there, it takes people time to read it. And then once they do, they can still make decisions and they can still invite you into certain conversations. So don’t, it’s easy for me to say, but don’t worry about it.
Stacey: Thank you so much. That’s really great and helpful advice. Thank you.
Panio Gianopoulos: Nikki, what’s your question?
Nikki: Yeah, you said you’ve been doing this role for seven years. And I was curious what trends you see. There’s so much changing. I’m curious what’s different now than it was seven years ago. And related to that, what trends do you see now happening that make you hopeful or excited?
India Lena González: Yeah. I think some of the trends that I’ve really seen this year, just in terms of like prose, fiction and nonfiction, I’ve seen less diversity in terms of the writers that are putting books out there. And that’s been obviously disheartening. I understand the environment that we’re living in and how that comes to be. But I’ve definitely seen that shift over even the last two to three years, far less diversity. Certain kinds of books are getting pushed for a timeliness for certain people in terms of certain topics and things of that sort that maybe weren’t being pushed before. And then others are getting pushed to the side. So that I’ve been noticing and that I’ve been kind of deeply saddened by. But then I think on the positive side, Going back to poetry, I think seeing the diversity poetry offers—and that it hasn’t stopped—may be because poetry is generally less driven by capitalism. No one’s in it for the money. So everyone’s really in it to just tell their story. I hope that continues to live and then maybe I’m not in the publishing houses. I’m not in the room when they’re making decisions on what to pick and what not to pick. But I definitely have noticed that certain stories are getting told. And there’s like a lot of things that are being told. I think there’s a lot of similar stories out there. Whereas before I felt that there were very different topics that one could choose from. And now it seems like we’re really capitalizing on certain experiences over others that we think will be more sellable. I’ll be honest about that because I’ve spoken at length about that to people that will listen to because it really is quite sad to just see how everything starts to become a monolith. Everything is the same, the same, the same. And so I do miss the options that we used to have. And now I have to really search to have options.
Panio Gianopoulos: This is sort of tangentially related, but I often hear claims like no one’s reading anymore. But how do you respond to that? Do you ever hear that?
India Lena González: Yeah, I think a lot of people are reading. I mean, because we’re really in service of like writers and readers. And when I think of our audience, I think of people who are going to want to read the books that we are promoting. I know that I read a whole lot, not just for work, and so do the people I speak with. There’s a lot of reading going on. I think that when you write, you read a lot naturally because that’s what helps feed you as well. But then I do think that when I take the subway to work in New York, a lot of people are reading books. A lot of people are reading books, whether it’s on a Kindle or it’s like a physical book. I’ve been really heartened by that because I don’t think that I saw it that much before, but all of a sudden it seems like more people are reading. Whether it’s escapism and people want to get out of this world into a different one, whatever it is, I know that romance does really well, for example, I think that is complete escapism, but there’s something in books that’s offering people, I think some people want to think deeper about the world that we’re in and understand how we got to where we’re at. I think some people want to leave it. My hope is that this will continue and that we don’t forget about this and make everything digital and then stop reading altogether. But yeah.
Panio Gianopoulos: I do see even the next generation of kids who are 17 and my daughter’s a big reader and she deliberately, when she goes to work as a babysitter, she deliberately turns her phone off or silences and brings her Kindle. The kid’s playing soccer or whatever. And she’ll read her Kindle because she doesn’t want to doomscroll. She doesn’t. And she’s not alone. I do see people her age fighting against this addiction, this screen addiction. And reading is one solution to it. It’s something I do too. I think, okay, I’ll just put Instagram away and I’ll just go back to this book I’m reading. So it’s very easy to think, oh, it’s just, you know, reading is going to be consumed by scrolling. But scrolling is ultimately junk food. It’s not satisfying in the same way that reading is. And we hit that. I think a lot of people find that out.
India Lena González: Yeah. This need to unplug is also a trend I’ve been seeing. Even younger generations—people who are teenagers or in their early twenties—want to unplug entirely. People are like, I’m just putting my phone away and I’m not responding to emails. I’m not even looking at them, which I didn’t know that was a thing. I feel that personally. So I’m always like the least amount of screen time, the better. But I’m really seeing that like people are responding, I think, strongly to like AI and just all these technological advances, people are like now on the opposite side being like, I just want to go outside and read a book. And we’re like, we’ve always been here. So it’s great to have you back. But that’s a nice thing that like younger generations are being like, you know what? Actually, I don’t really want to doom scroll. TikTok isn’t really for me. I do want to do something that will feed me because like you said, ultimately it is just junk food. And I don’t think that you get the best feeling after social media is what I’ve heard and what I felt. Sometimes it does the exact opposite. So if you really want to do something that feeds you properly, then I think that literature is a great antidote to that. That’s the medicine.
Panio Gianopoulos: Absolutely. All right. One last question and Nikki’s got a great one. She said, “Do you have one single book recommendation for us? Something you recently loved?”
India Lena González: I’m in the process of reading—this is a poetry recommendation—Aracelis Girmay’s latest book, green of all heads. Yeah, I’m in the process of reading that and blown away by it. Absolutely blown away by it. Yeah. It’s super authentic, just in terms of everything you’ve been talking about of like language that is authentic to the writer. It has a wonderful interiority to it that sometimes you can fully understand and sometimes you can’t. It makes you want to go back and read it again. And so there’s something to it that I find really, really moving and deeply sincere. I don’t know that I felt that kind of level of sincerity from someone in a long time when I’ve read a book where it just feels like an absolute uncovering of self without any performance to look good in front of someone. Yeah.
Panio Gianopoulos: Oh, that sounds amazing. All right. I’m checking it out. India, thank you so much for your time and your wisdom and your insights and your optimism. I would say that’s really lovely to hear, like sort of fighting the good fight out there.
India Lena González: Absolutely. That’s what I’m here for. Thank you so much for having me.
