Letters From Libby James

It has been close to twenty years since people started paying me to edit their manuscripts and during only the last couple years has AI really begun to be part of the conversation. What role will it/does it have in publishing? Will it kill the editing business? Will it ever be as good as a human? I am always interested how other editors feel about AI coming into our field and everyone seems to have a different take. I connected with Helene Kiser through Kit’s Creator Network and asked if I...

A couple months ago, like many people, I jumped on the train of commenting on Elizabeth Gilbert's new memoir, All the Way to The River, even before it was released. The stuff coming out on what this book was about just made it sound like it was going to be batshit crazy. People were talking like they didn't know how she wasn't going to end up in jail. Well, I read the book. And not only do I think she won't end up in jail, I think it's actually a very good memoir. If you go to Goodreads or...

Poetry has never been a profitable art form in any straightforward sense, and yet poems outlast empires, economic systems, and fashion trends. Poetry resurfaces most forcefully in moments of social fracture—when language itself is under strain—when ordinary speech proves insufficient for the complexity of lived experience. In this way, poetry has long functioned as a quiet but persistent form of activism. Activist poetry is often misunderstood as sloganized verse. This misunderstanding rests...

Back when I wrote The Rebel Newsletter, I used to interview cool creatives about interesting aspects of their practice, books, or business. I wanted to return to this and introduce you to some writers and artists I learn from. These interviews will appear occasionally over the year, and I will be interested to hear what you take away from them. If you gained an insight or thought they were just rad, I hope you will not just tell me so I know you would like more from them or more on their...

I have become less of an idealist as I have gotten older. I think in the last few days, hours even, it is hard to believe things can change drastically for the better. Like really change. But deep down, at my core, I know that writing can change people. And people change the world. Anger is one of the most reliable entry points into political writing, and before you outline a political essay, you need to locate the specific question your anger points toward. Not the conclusion you want to...

Nonfiction done well changes a reader’s thinking and shows them your big, original brain. If you want to sell this kind of work to a publisher, you don’t even need a finished manuscript, but you do need a smart proposal. A good one shows the editor what kind of thinker you are, not just what the book is “about.” You lay out the shape of the project, the argument, what’s new or urgent about it, and who’s going to read it. You have to understand who actually needs this book and why they’re...

Winter isn’t messing around in the Northwoods this year. It is beautiful and magical and cold and horrible. I try to embrace my hygge-ness but I long for the desert or the ocean, or just anywhere I can wear my flip-flops. I feel like I am the only person who did not watch Stranger Things as the final season episodes came out. I cannot handle the loss right now and preferred just to wait until it was all over, and y’all have confirmed every detail about it – who lived and died – and I can...