WELL, IMAGINE THAT

WORDS BY ABI SLONE

Images from top: A double-page spread from Darling Baby by Maira Kalman (2021); Susan Rich showing off her craftiness (photo by Sarah Neville); sketches from the YA Phoebe’s Diary by Phoebe Wahl; two double-page spreads from Farmhouse by Sophie Blackall (2022); Passport by Sophia Glock (2021); I Sang You Down From the Stars by Tasha Spillett-Sumner, illustrated by Michaela Goade (2021); A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket, illustrated by Brett Helquist (1999); Borders by Thomas King, illustrated by Natasha Donovan; Strollercoaster by Matt Ringler and art by Raúl the Third and Elaine Bay.

When speaking with children’s book editor Susan Rich, it feels like it comes quite naturally to her — the ability to shepherd the seeds of a story into a full harvest, rich with layers, learnings and life. Over the past 25 years, Rich’s career has seen enormous success — from the blockbuster Lemony Snicket’s A Series Unfortunate Events, to books including Thomas King’s Borders and Tasha Spillett-Sumner’s I Sang You Down From the Stars that help to fill in the representational gaps found in children’s literature and publishing. Thankfully for the industry, the New York Times bestselling, National Book Award and Caldecott Medal-winning editor shows no signs of slowing down, and like everything fine, she just keeps getting better.

THE CRONING: How are you?
SUSAN RICH: Hello! I am doing well, all things considered. I like to say that I have nothing to complain about, but I will anyway. . .  I mean, these are historic, challenging times. But I have a lot of lucky stars to count. 

TC: How has this upside-down pandemic time changed how you work?
SR: In many ways, it has been good for my work. I have been at-large, working remotely since I moved from New York to Toronto in 2001. All these years I’ve been working with systems that relied on being in the office — a lot of paper passing hands and attending meetings where everyone was in the same room, except for me. I was the speakerphone sitting on the boardroom table. Now that we are all working remotely, things are happening digitally for everyone, so the systems are much better. I don’t wish for a forever-digitized meeting space, but I am grateful for the sense of community I get from these gatherings. Also, while the pandemic wasn’t great for bookstores, it was not bad for book sales.

TC: You’re a children’s book editor. Did you always think that this would be your career destiny? Was it something you thought about before you found yourself in it?
SR: Oh, no. When I first started out at McGill University, I majored in Political Science. I had been really into student government in high school and thought the obvious next step will be into real politics. I did not find my people in poli sci. But then I stumbled into a Children’s Literature survey class and was instantly all in. And when I dug into research for that class, I realized that there were lots of people out there making a career in the field — critics, academics, publishers, creators — there was a whole industry out there dedicated to children’s books. I didn’t know right away that editing would be the thing, but I was sure enough about the field that after McGill I moved to Boston and got a master’s degree in Children’s Literature at Simmons College. 

From Simmons, I landed a job at Orchard Books, a wonderful small children’s book publishing house. I moved to New York thinking I would spend a year working in children’s publishing. I have never left. 

TC: Can you tell me the story of when everything changed for you career wise?
SR: I was fired from Simon & Schuster in the mid 90’s. It was my second job in publishing in New York and I wondered if it would be my last. Was it time to move back home to Canada? Maybe find a job in academics somewhere or see if there was a spot for me in the Canadian children’s book world? I decided to wait it out in New York for a bit and figure out what might be next. I was freelancing, reading manuscripts and fact-checking books to pay the rent when I got a job at HarperCollins. My first acquisition there was Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. That, I suppose, is an ‘everything changed’ moment. 

That series was a marvellous, massive success that swallowed my life whole for a decade or so. I kept my hands on every aspect of it while it grew, reviewing materials from foreign publishers, getting into all the marketing copy, everything had to be properly Snickety. It was the success of that series that allowed me to become an editor-at-large. I moved to Toronto but got to keep my job in New York. 

TC: Did moving to Toronto from New York change your relationship with the industry? With your work?
SR: There are a number of things I have had to give up to move, but so far, I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I do miss the day-to-day of being with colleagues, the serendipity of office culture, being closer to the projects other people are building. And I miss New York! But the pleasure of living in Canada, raising my kids here, paired with the opportunities of publishing in the States can’t be beat. Truth is, I feel so lucky to have the arrangement I have, I feel a bit sheepish talking about it.

“I THINK THE CALIBRE AND SUCCESS OF MY BOOKS HAS SURPRISED ME.”

TC: As your career was growing, did you have visions about what your life would look like at this stage of your life? Personal and professional? Does it look like how you imagined?
SR: When I was studying at Simmons College I landed an internship with Melanie Kroupa who was an editor-at-large for Orchard Books at the time. She was publishing beautiful books out of a New York publishing house while living in her charming house just outside of Boston. This was a vision for the future! But in many ways, the way it has all played out professionally has far exceeded what I might have imagined then. 

I often think about this — at Simmons, I wrote a thesis about the work of Maira Kalman. This past April, I published a book she wrote and illustrated, Darling Baby, the third book we’ve worked on together. If you had told me this was possible when I was writing that paper, I would not have believed you. I think the calibre and success of my books has surprised me.  

I suppose my personal life looks like I might have imagined it to be, but the living of it is surprising at every turn. I am married to a man that I dig, and we have two spectacular, oddball kids turning into grown-ups, and a sweet dog. One of the surprising parts is the way relationships evolve over these great swaths of time. When I left my hometown of Winnipeg in 1988, I thought I had already made the friends that I would consider my old friends, but of course as the decades go on, there are people who were new friends 20 years ago who feel truly like old friends now. Another surprise is what it’s like to see your kids grow up. When you have kids, I think, you imagine what it will be like to have kids, you know, children, but you don’t really leap to the place where you can imagine what it will be like to have a relationship with the adults you raised. It’s quite something.  

TC: What is the best thing you've done to date?
SR: Writing Club! I have run versions of Writing Club at community centres, libraries, conferences, a Hanukkah Fair, a local school, a shelter in New York, and once, for teachers in Ghana. It has nothing to do with the mechanics of language, or any pursuit of better-formed writing. It is playful and creative and offers an invitation to toss every rule aside and engage with language for fun. 

I get so much out of it. It’s magic. When I invite students to join writing club at the local school, I always tell them that there is admission for entry: every student must bring a word to get in. And oh, the words I get! I learn a lot about these writers from the word they pick. One kid brought the word ‘courage’ and spoke for a while about what courage meant to them, but then paused and added, ‘But what I really love about the word courage is that hidden inside it is the word, rage.’ Isn’t that remarkable?

TC: That is amazing!
SR: I love writing club. 

TC: What is something that you still want to do work-wise that you haven’t done yet?
SR: You know, I am often asked if I would like to write my own book, and I don’t particularly have that goal. At least, not so far. Editing is its own thing, and I am good at it, but I am getting better. The work of it continually teaches me how to do it better. I approach my work with this feeling that there are a lot of books ahead of me that I don’t know about yet that I will fall in love with and publish. I will want to try new things, amplify different voices, challenge expectations in new ways. I guess what I still want to do is what I’ve been doing, but better.  

TC: That is an exceptional answer. Do you feel like the publishing industry is more elastic when it comes to age and what you can accomplish when? Are there career expectations or accomplishments at ‘stage of life’ or is it more fluid?
SR: Corporate publishing has a hierarchy, but I do think it’s pretty fluid. There are so many ways to measure success in this industry, so many ways to make a mark. One burden of age in publishing can be that after you’ve established yourself as publishing a certain sort of thing, it can be a challenge to try to publish a completely different sort of book.

I have also been thinking lately of all the greats of publishing, the wonderful mentors I’ve had, the elder statespeople I have looked up to. And of course, it occurs to me now that I am coming into that stage myself. It motivates me to take time to mentor others, make myself available to other editors on their way up. 

TC: So who are these elder statespeople of which you speak? Those you admire?
SR: So many! Too many. Oh, I fear that if I start naming names, I am going to eat all the word space you have for me here. There are artists and writers, designers, production directors, agents, editors, copyeditors, marketers, publicists, librarians, booksellers . . .  all these spectacular people dedicating themselves to this idea that the right book for the right kid at the right time is a game-changer. 

But, okay, I am naming two. TWO! Charlotte Sheedy has been the central mentor and dare I say tormentor of my career. She has shown me enormous love and she has kicked my ass, and I have benefited tremendously from both. And Nikki Garcia, who used to be my assistant at Little Brown. She’s now moved on up and is editing her own books. But we still talk and I learned a lot from her when I worked with her, and I still do. She is unafraid to speak her mind, and in doing so, made me aware of some of my own blind spots. I am really grateful to her for that. 

“I AM, AT LAST, READY TO RISK LOOKING STUPID.”

TC: What types of things do you do now that you never would have even 10 years ago? Do you find that you take more risks? What kind of risks do you take?
SR: I am, at last, ready to risk looking stupid. Like, if I don’t know what someone is talking about, I say, ‘I don’t know what you are talking about.’ Or, ‘I don’t know that band, I haven’t read that book, I don’t know the difference between Holland and The Netherlands.’ It’s very freeing, but more than that, I learn things. 

TC: What kind of people these days are you drawn to for collaborations?
SR: I believe very much in creative collaborative chemistry. I am looking for talent, for projects, ideas, but I am also looking for chemistry, which I wasn’t always attuned to. I’ve been making books with Sophie Blackall (Finding Winnie, Hello Lighthouse, the upcoming Farmhouse) that are an exercise in such joyful, fruitful collaboration that I want to make books together forever. 

I have also grown more aware over time of whose voices I am amplifying, what sort of stories need telling. There are books missing from our shelves, and I want to try to fill some of those gaps. I published a book this past year, I Sang You Down from the Stars by two Indigenous creators that is doing some of that work. It celebrates the very specific cultural experience of creating a medicine bundle for the arrival of a newborn, but hits all these universal chords about the way babies are wished for and welcomed into families. And it was a New York Times bestseller! The book Strollercoaster grew out of learning that there was a lack of Latino dads portrayed in picture books, something I learned from educators when I attended a wonderful teachers’ conference called Nerd Camp.

I have a book in the works with Phoebe Wahl, who has created a number of wonderful picture books. We’re working on an illustrated novel, Phoebe’s Diary, which is gloriously sex-positive and body-positive. It’s a book we need. 

TC: Making changes, big and small, can be challenging to ourselves and what’s around us. It can also be invigorating. Even something as simple as hair choices (a personal fave topic of mine). I want to know about grey versus colour, how you feel about that…
SR: I am very pleased with the grey hair on my own head, and find myself smitten with the grey heads I spot around town. Grey hair can seem defiant, powerful. Dyed hair can be wonderful too, of course, but less so when you’re worrying that your roots are showing, you know? When it’s about hiding something. 

I was able to grow out my grey post-chemotherapy, which is a good way to go grey — except for the chemotherapy part. At the same time, many of my friends were also choosing to grow out their grey. My mother noticed and said, ‘Soon all you women in your 50’s will be grey and all us women in our 70’s will have dyed hair!’ She has since gone grey, too, and it’s beautiful. 

I will admit to checking in every now and again on a Facebook group called “Gray and Proud” and am thrilled every time — not only by the impressive photos of (mostly) women with their wonderful grey dos, but also the immense rush of support and love from the community to every photo posted, and its grand celebration of freedom from dye.