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First Draft with Sarah Enni

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Founded in 2014, First Draft with Sarah Enni is a weekly podcast that features honest, meaningful conversations with storytellers about their unique perspectives on the creative process, and provides more transparency about the professional side of artistic endeavors. Quite simply, Sarah really goes there with her guests and the resulting conversations are raw, informative and often therapeutic. First Draft has featured interviews with dozens of New York Times best-selling writers, as well as Emmy and Peabody-winning writers, and winners of the Caldecott Award, the William C. Morris Young Adult Debut award, the Michael El. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature, and the National Book Award for Young People's Literature. To date, the podcast has been downloaded nearly half a million times.

Listen to First Draft on Apple Podcasts or wherever podcasts are available.

Sarah's latest venture is Track Changes, a First Draft miniseries that aims to demystify book publishing, debuting on April 16th. Over nine episodes, Track Changes answers the surprisingly complex question: How does a book get published? The U.S. book publishing industry is full of idiosyncrasies and traditions, as debut author Jennifer de Leon quickly learns. We follow Jennifer as she navigates the ups and downs leading to the release of her YA novel, Don't Ask Me Where I'm From. With the insight, curiosity, and matter-of-factness that listeners of First Draft have come to expect, host Sarah Enni talks to professionals at all stages of the publishing process—from agents and editors to publicity and marketing professionals and more—to give listeners the information they need to be more knowledgeable and prepared professional writers.

The series will take the listener on a 360-degree tour of the publishing process, providing context and human voices for every step. Aspiring authors, professional writers, and industry vets alike will have a renewed respect and appreciation for the industry—and, hopefully, some ideas about how to make it better.

 

Among the publishing professionals to be featured are: Holly Root, founder of Root Literary; Jo Volpe, founder of New Leaf Literary & Media; Sarah Burnes and Seth Fishman, both with The Gernert Company; Katherine Tegen, publisher with Katherine Tegen Books at HarperCollins; Stacey Barney, senior editor at Penguin/Putnam Books for Young Readers; Kate Sullivan, former senior editor at Delacourt and currently senior content development manager at New Leaf Literary & Media; Margot Wood, founder of Epic Reads at HarperCollins and director of sales and marketing at Oni Press; Nikki Pierce, co-founder of Method Agency, a boutique branding and marketing agency.

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About Sara Enni:

Sarah Enni writes young adult books, and is the creator and host of the First Draft podcast. She was born in Seattle, and has lived all over the continental U.S., eventually landing in Los Angeles, where she lives now with her cat, Hammer. Sarah has been writing--zines, fake newspapers, yearbook copy, English essays, original astrology signs--since forever. Her first job out of college was reporting on radioactive waste for a trade publication. Sick of her job, on the verge of divorce, and starved for inspiration, Sarah started First Draft as a way to connect with other writers by hearing their challenges, fears, and tales of creative endurance. Armed with a mic and a destination, Sarah hit the road on two-month, 6,600-mile cross-country road trip in 2014, gathering more than 60 interviews. She eventually arrived in Los Angeles but decided the project was far from done. The podcast now has more than 200 episodes, and has been downloaded nearly half a million times. And she hopes it's just the beginning. Her debut young adult novel, Tell Me Everything, is out now. You can read her short story in the New York Times best-selling villain anthology, Because You Love To Hate Me, also out now.

https://www.firstdraftpod.com/

https://www.sarahenni.com/

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