on publishing & evangelicalism: a conversation with my editor, jenny xu

Among publishing professionals, Jenny Xu needs no introduction. A Publisher’s Weekly 2021 Star Watch Honoree, her rise through the editorial ranks has been methodical and persistent, marked by her fierce advocacy for authors with stories from the margins.

Working on both nonfiction and poetry, her list includes the NYT bestselling Rise: A Pop History of Asian America from Jeff Yang, Phil Yu, and Philip Wang; Youtuber David Yi’s Pretty Boys: Legendary Icons Who Redefined Beauty; Palestinian American poet Hala Alyan’s collection The Twenty-Ninth Year; and forthcoming knockouts like poet Franny Choi’s The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On and, uhh, Sasha Velour’s memoir. Among numerous others that you will no doubt hear about, in part because one of them is my debut memoir, out next month, Heretic. 

I didn’t know any of that (and some of it had not yet happened) when I first met Jenny in August 2020. It was my second time on submission, because (as I’ve discussed publicly on several occasions), the first time my agent, Dana Murphy, and I went out with the book, it didn’t just not sell — there was no interest. No phone calls. No nothing. So we went back to the drawing board and spent a year revising, because both of us knew there was something here and we weren’t giving up easily. (Dana and I both have Capricorn moons. We are nothing if not relentless.) 

The second time we went out on submission, the list of editors Dana submitted Heretic to was a bit different — and it included Jenny. Who started reading Heretic seemingly the minute it hit her inbox. Who, within days, wanted to set up a phone call. Who got the book. Who understood the vision. Who was also Midwestern and ex-evangelical, and who consequently knew the potential audience it could land with. And who ultimately bought the book at auction.

Getting to work with Jenny has been a dream. It’s the kind of supportive, real talk but emotionally connective authorial-editorial relationship I want for all of my author friends. Jenny is profoundly thorough in a way that makes even my control freak Capricorn sun/moon self feel held and safe. She is a genius at structure (as is evidenced by the fact that she edits poetry and hybrid narrative nonfiction). She will hype you up just as much as she challenges you to go places you didn’t think you could.

And she is extremely, extravagantly generous with her writers, as is evidenced by the fact that she was willing to sit down with me for an interview about her career in publishing, evangelicalism and leaving the church, and her advice for folks looking to sell their books. All hail!

This interview has been edited for length

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Jeanna Kadlec: Jenny! If you could introduce yourself for folks who may not read Publishers Marketplace obsessively?

Jenny Xu: I'm an editor at HarperCollins for two imprints, for Harper Books and Ecco. I edit poetry for Ecco and then nonfiction across a range of narrative styles for Harper. 

I've been in publishing for seven and a half, almost eight years now. 

JK: Wow.

JX: I know! I thought about this over the summer, like holy crap, that's a big chunk of time. 

I've devoted most of my career to trying to bring in marginalized narratives into publishing. I've been really lucky to work with places like POC in Publishing and other mentorship programming around the industry to try and bring more editors of color into the business. At work, [I’ve been] pushing for diversity initiatives and pushing for more representative authors than publishing has traditionally worked on previously.

JK: You are part of the vanguard of this generation of editors that is really in the trenches working to change things.

To back up a little bit from where you are now. I wanted to ask about your trajectory: how you got into editing and publishing, from being at university. Was this always the dream? 

JX: Absolutely not. I always like to tell people, I feel like I got lucky. I hear that a lot from other POC or other people who are not upper class New Yorkers. I think [publishing] is such a siloed industry. It really has this history of being something [where] classy, wealthy young men with means were doing their thing. When it became lower paying, [it] shifted into wealthy wives with means, or wealthy young women who wanted to do something literary and interesting, while also eventually becoming a society girl — which has shifted over the last few decades little by little. I think, though, that the hierarchy, the structure, and the low pay has stayed and has made it impossible. The culture of hiring people you know has really excluded so many folks.

That is why I feel like it was luck that brought me in. I had no idea what publishing was before I moved to New York. I went to Columbia, which I think was honestly probably one of the biggest ways of getting in, in that there were alumni who had worked in publishing. I did a couple of internships during college and did not really enjoy it! It felt cold, like physically cold. I was in the corner of these offices in a spare cube just freezing and reading slush piles.

JK: Internships at Big 5s — or Big 6, then?

JX: Simon & Schuster and at a literary agency.

Everyone tells you that your job in publishing is really dependent on your managers. I would say there’s a sense of diffused responsibility over interns that's maybe shifted recently. Even at Simon & Schuster, probably over a decade ago now, I think they were trying to be more diverse in terms of their interns, but did not really know what that meant.

After those, I was like, I don't want to do publishing. I'm out. But then right as I was graduating, Jenna Johnson, who is an editor at FSG, had been mentoring another friend of mine, and both of them happened to pass along this job at HMH [Houghton Mifflin Harcourt] in Boston. And I interviewed, and that's how I got the job. 

I think it was probably less competitive to start in Boston, honestly, but I really admired the editors I was working with. One of them was Alison Bechdel's editor, and I was like, amazing! Love Alison Bechdel. So much respect. That’s how I got going.

JK: I appreciate that you make that [process] really transparent in a way that this industry is so not transparent. 

Since we are going in the direction of HMH, and because you are an acquiring editor, and because [my book deal that we signed was] initially with HMH, I wanted to ask how acquiring at an independent press — admittedly a very large independent press — was different or is different from acquiring at a Big 5?

JX: Even in the Big 5, you're going to see differences from imprint to imprint, kind of depending. But I would say that at HMH, it felt a lot more communal in a way? I think HarperCollins is just so large and at HMH, it was still big, especially for an independent, but I think small enough that every publishing choice was really looked over by every team. 

We had an acquisitions meeting for your book where we had marketing feedback, publicity feedback, sales feedback. Everyone was like, how are we going to make this work? Is it worth it? It was a huge conversation where we were talking about, is this person going to be able to speak to things that are newsworthy and hooks and all of it? And people like, loved you, and loved meeting you, loved seeing the work that you'd already done. 

I think at Harper there's still a little bit of that, but I have to jump through fewer hoops. Part of that might also just be because I have become more senior over the last few years. Now, I still get reads from other folks, but for the most part, I have a really strong sense of what I want to do. At this point, it’s kind of just like a convo with my boss, who is the publisher, to be like, What do you think? And then, how much? It’s also gotten to the point where I feel like I have a relatively good sense of how to value a project, as well. 

So it's gotten easier, but I think it's maybe not true for everybody depending on seniority and imprint. I can lean more on how I feel personally, that this [book] is important and I would like to be able to push that forward.

JK: That makes sense. Are you a part of reads for more junior editors at Harper and Ecco, who are still in that building process?

JX: Yeah. I try really hard to do this for the junior editors, and I read a lot of fiction for folks. When someone is bringing up a queer author or a POC author, I want to be able to be like, absolutely. We should definitely do this! Or throw in any comps [comparative titles, which can help prove a book’s marketability and are notoriously difficult for BIPOC & LGBTQIA+ authors] that I might have. 

When I was coming up, that is how I was able to acquire things — because more senior people understood that this is what I cared about and trusted me enough to be like, if you value this, then we're trying to see where you're coming from and trying to support it. 

JK: Just paying it forward and being generous and holding the door open for folks and not shutting down the projects that we see get shut down so often.

JX: We’ve all felt that so personally. There’s so many projects that even today I'm just like, we should have published it!

JK: Are there any “ones that got away” that you can share publicly?

JX: Oh my god, so many. There was one that came in when I was an assistant that I think about all the time. It's this memoir called Ordinary Girls by Jaquira Díaz.

JK: YES.

JX: It’s so good, right? Incredibly beautiful and just so striking. And she's such a gorgeous writer. I had met her at a conference and had chased her down after her reading because I was like, that was so good. I was an assistant like a year in or something. I wound up meeting her agent, who was so lovely, and I was like, promise to send it to me — which is a huge deal. 

I was just, at the time, working for a publisher who didn't really get that vision. He was like, I've seen exactly this and it doesn’t feel fresh to me. And I was like, You're wrong! but did not have the kind of power to push back at that point.

JK: But now you do. 

On that note, what ephemeral qualities do you look for in a project? Like, not these things are on my wish list, but is there a way to define that X factor that makes your heart sing?

JX: I think part of it is just when something comes in where I'm just — maybe I'm not even fully conscious that I've been thinking about this thing. 

Like, honestly, your project — when it came in and I was reading the pitch, I was just like, oh my god! I have been thinking about this so much! I have been thinking about evangelicalism and the larger structures that it’s tied itself into. And I have been thinking about what it means to grow up evangelical, and I don’t know that people really talk about leaving it as much. I think [Heretic] was sort of a response to questions that I didn't even know I was really solidifying in my head.

I think that happens more often than not. Something comes in at just the right time and provides some kind of guideline to something that I've been wondering about myself for a while.

JK: The subtext of that speaks so much to why it's so important to have more people than just like cishet white women editing books. Like, what kinds of questions are percolating in the backs of people's minds? 

But yeah, to dig into what you bring up. I remember our first phone call so well because it was kind of like a first date where there was just such a spark? *both laughing* And I was like, I found my person! I don't need to talk to anybody else! Like, this is a love match! She gets the book! It’s amazing! 

But one of the pieces that made me feel that way was our shared faith background and just how you spoke to your own faith journey, and journey out of evangelicalism. And so I wanted to ask, to pivot a little bit away from publishing: what is your relationship to the evangelical church?

JX: I think especially in reading your book, I learned so much. One, just because you've obviously spent so much more time researching and thinking about the church and your experience with it than I had. 

And also because I think, too, that I grew up in a different type of evangelical church in it being this Chinese evangelical church plant. Like I didn't even know the word “church plant” until I was reading Heretic! Like, yeah, that's what we were! It was started entirely anew by a couple of ex-missionaries from another church in town. And I literally watched it grow, as I was growing up, from like a small church that was operating from trailers, at one of the town’s evangelical private schools. Oh my gosh, before that even, it was literally taking place on off days at another white evangelical church. So we were renting that space. Then we moved to the school. Then finally, they had enough money to buy their own building. 

I’ve just seen them grow exponentially in numbers, and I’ve been thinking about it a lot since working on your book, but also definitely before that. Growing up in it, and feeling, like you did, so constrained by it, and reaching the point where you’re like, I can’t do this anymore. I feel constantly watched. I feel like everything is rebelling against this very specific set of rules in terms of how to live your life in this very specific community that you feel like you aren’t allowed to move beyond.

I think I was reading Mark Twain’s Letters from the Earth — *both cracking up* — I know! This is so emo in high school.

JK: Oh my god, yeah.

JX: And I was like, oh my god, the devil is so charming, AND HE’S RIGHT! 

Like, I never thought to look at it from his perspective before? Like, God is fucked up! There are so many horrible things that he's done and it’s not like black and white; it's so blurry. 

It was such a small thing that tripped the wire, like, we don’t have to do this.

JK: I love that. [That] literature was a big part of your journey out of evangelicalism. 

JX: Yeah, it really was. I also grew up really loving fantasy and sci-fi, and that definitely helped balance out the fear and respect you have around the Bible. 

I think in editing your book and talking to you, I think I had never fully realized how much the fear of repercussions and sense of guilt really defined my growing up, and is still something I talk about in therapy today.

JK: Word. I'm thinking so much, with all of these climate disasters that are happening and like what's happening in Jackson with the water, and folks being [surprised] and like, oh, this country is just so okay with death. And I'm like, yeah! 

JX: Right!

JK: Like, yeah, evangelicals are 100% good with death! They are very, very okay with death as repercussion!

JX: Like you wake up tomorrow, and you could be dead, and it's great!

JK: And it's great! The, this world is not our home shit. I feel like that's the invisible backdrop for all this, coupled with white supremacy and white people being God's chosen whatever bullshit. I shouldn’t say invisible, because I feel like when you grow up evangelical, that's incredibly visible. But for so many folks who don't have that lens, it's the invisible piece that's supporting so much of this total policy failure.

JX: It really does skew your brain, absolutely. Being a child and feeling like you could die tomorrow, your whole family could die tomorrow, is horrible! Or that like, in some near-future, you will be in absolute perpetual pain [because of hell or the End Times] is so bizarre.

JK: And we are taught that as little, little children. Writing the book pushed me to have to [ask], well, how young was I? when these very specific, disturbing things were being taught to me. And it really is fucked up! I was in kindergarten!

[Heretic helped me dig into how] there is shit that goes on in any group of people, for sure, but when religion enters the picture, there is just so much — I don’t want to say more, but like intense? — potential for institutional harm. You’re talking about what God wants and the moral center of the universe. The stakes get so exponentially high in a way that’s hard to compare. 

JX: It totally is. There’s so many emotions that come up around it. Even today, I have such a strong sense of what is right or not. When someone does not behave in a certain way, I get so mad and I'm just like, there are social rules here! But then I'm just like, everything's chaos! I don't know why I'm feeling this way! And then it's like, Oh. I grew up that way.

JK: I feel very similarly. Like, I left the church, but unwiring the fundamentalist harddrive has been so difficult, and I think is just going to be a lifelong process. I still very much see many things in black and white.

JX: Same.

JK: And I really push myself to make a choice one way or the other. I don't have a lot of space for grey in a lot of areas, and that's something I'm working on, slowly.

JX: It’s interesting. I think to go back to leaving the church, it's like upon leaving, I feel, similarly to your story, I was running from it. Don’t want to think about it; don't want to see it. But then, with Trump and even pre-Trump, with the rise of the Right, it’s just peaked in recent years where I have all these friends who grew up not religious at all, just being like, can we talk about this? Like, can we talk about the church and what is happening? And I'm just like, I really have to think about it now!

JK: Yeah. There are so many different kinds of evangelical churches, but there are these core, extremist tenets, and it’s like we all have different inroads to talk about certain kinds of trauma and how it’s informed the national conversation and the rise of the Right. So we all get to be missionaries now. *both laughing* 

JX: Spreading the reverse!

JK: Apostate missionaries! 

I did want to ask if there were any parts of Heretic that were hard for you to edit? Or not necessarily “hard,” but that tripped wires or were “oh shit” moments?

JX: I think there were a lot of moments. I had already done a little bit of thinking about all this beforehand, so it ultimately, thankfully, wasn’t triggering. 

Some of the most interesting work that I had never really thought about as much, or just felt like I was hitting walls in terms of thinking about, was connecting the individual to collective structures we have in our brains from evangelicalism, and then seeing it built up like little Lego blocks: first within your church, then within your community, and then on this broader culture and legal and political scale. That was work that I feel like I just did not know how to put together. Like when friends ask me, how did this happen? I'm like, I don't know! Like, I don't understand why evangelicals hate gay people. I really don't get it. 

Seeing you unpack that and showing it as a dislocation of the other [was helpful]. Ultimately, what we talked about throughout was exercises in power and evangelicalism just being about pure power and supremacy. That helped me finally click into it because I had so for so long been like, it's just a rule. Like, evangelicals hate immigrants!

JK: I'm glad to hear that. Also, as you know, because you have read this book more than anyone except me, you are very aware of the challenges I had in structuring all of that and how much my brain chaotically scattered when trying to communicate all of that. So I also very strongly credit you with helping me actually organize those things into arguments, and explaining how that works.

JX: It was definitely all there. I think it was just being able to convey that to the reader, because it’s not direct, and it’s just so diffuse because it's centuries long and it's like, how do you tell that kind of story? while also keeping it grounded within the personal story as well.

JK: The challenge of the structure of the book! 

I’ve just been really grateful for you the whole time and felt really lucky. And I know what I think makes for a really good author-editor relationship on my end. But I would ask what your take on that is? Slash, what would you tell authors to look for, when on submission or thinking about what kind of support they want in a project? What do you wish they knew?

JX: I think regardless of whether it's an agent or an editor, having that gut sense of trust is so important. The trusting part is so important in both directions. Everything goes awry when one party or another feels like the other person is not doing what is best for the book. And it's so tricky because ultimately everybody's goal is to, bottom line, sell copies. 

But things do come up. The publishing process is not fair. It's a fight every day to get more attention and funding and support for my books. And I feel like it's this chain of trust that has to start from the author-editor. I have to be able to go to the publicist and the marketer and be like, this is forged in steel. Trust us. We are doing our best. Now you do your best! Let’s all make this a happy little situation. 

I mean, you’ve seen so much of it because of the Harper Union stuff and you’ve been such a wonderful ally and advocate and that’s something the union really needed, was for authors to chime in. But it’s all taking place in the context of horrible labor practices of everyone being overworked, underpaid, underappreciated by the system which has this really lofty goal of publishing great literature. 

I feel like with our team, we got so lucky. [here, we go on an incredibly long love fest about the HERETIC team: shoutout to Kelly Doyle in Publicity, Becca Putnam in Marketing, Liz Velez in Editorial, and my agent Dana]

I try to interact with my colleagues the same way I do with my authors. I'm upfront: like, here's a situation, here's what I think the best way we can move forward is, let me know if you agree. I think that is what I'm constantly doing between you and Dana and then me and the rest of the team. 

Make sure that your communication style is hopefully similar to your editor. And get some kind of proof that they're going to go to bat for you because I think that hinges on their passion for the book and their care for the author. It is truly a lot of energy. 

JK: That’s something I didn't understand before being really deep into a submission process that was going successfully — just how much work it was on the editor’s side to acquire a project that they cared about, and to then actually see it to fruition. I don't even know what verb to use — just how intense that curation, cultivation, midwife, coach thing is at every stage. And for an editor like you who's also so emotionally supportive of your authors — like you check in very regularly and your edits are so substantive, and you're incredibly available and are then doing that with an entire roster of writers and then having all the colleagues that you're working with.

I just try to keep that in mind, that every single person on our team is doing this for so many people. The amount of work is astonishing to me.

JX: Yeah. And I think that is why that kind of initial passion needs to really be there. That’s why it’s really difficult when people get orphaned [when an editor leaves/is fired from the imprint/publisher and their authors are then randomly reassigned to different editors who may or may not have investment in their project]. You don’t have that initial energy. 

It shouldn’t be like that, ultimately. Everyone should have the kind of time to publish everything well, but that is just not the case.

JK: For sure. What advice would you have for authors who are on submission, or who are finishing and are looking to publish soon? Especially for POC and LGBTQIA+ writers who have perhaps been keeping up with the news and are aware of what the publishing landscape is right now. 

JX: One, is to be really tenacious. Like with your process, it took a while to find the right person, and that really is what it is. It really comes down to finding the right supporters and folks who see your project for what it is. I think especially for POC, especially for queer authors, it's so important to not jump on the first person you come across necessarily. 

Also, do not take it on yourself if no one is “getting” your project. Be aware if you’re getting feedback that you feel instinctually is shifting your project from what you want it to be. Because I do think because of this publishing system, because of how white it is and how heteronormative it is, there is so much whitewashing and pruning of projects because of on the one hand, this desire for diversity and then on the other hand, tradition. [There’s] this pruning of projects by marginalized people into something that is more palatable, I think, for the expected white cis straight audience. 

Then, take the time and research folks. Know what someone’s track is, while also taking a chance on younger folks, too. All the diversity in terms of editorial is concentrated at the very bottom right now. There’s a couple more folks who’ve been around who are at the top, but truly very minimal. That’s what I can think of that isn’t too specific!

JK: Those are really good things to keep in mind!

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