Rough Draft is excited to welcome author Sara B. Franklin along with editor Jenn Sit to celebrate the publication of Sara's new book, The Editor.
We are excited to announce that we will be heading the pre-order campaign for The Editor and you can pre-order your copy through our website. This book publishes on May 28, 2024 and will be available for pickup from that date forward. If you would like your copy signed, please join us at the event or plan to pick it up afterward. Copies of The Editor will be also be available for purchased on event night. This event is free with food, drink, or book purchase and seating is first-come, first-served.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
Legendary editor Judith Jones, the woman behind some of the most important authors of the 20th century—including Julia Child, Anne Frank, Edna Lewis, John Updike, and Sylvia Plath—finally gets her due in this intimate biography.
When twenty-five-year-old Judith Jones began working as a secretary at Doubleday’s Paris office in 1949, she spent most of her time wading through manuscripts in the slush pile and passing on projects—until one day, a book caught her eye. She read it in one sitting, then begged her boss to consider publishing it. A year later, Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl became a bestseller. It was the start of a culture-defining career in publishing.
During her more than fifty years as an editor at Knopf, Jones nurtured the careers of literary icons such as Sylvia Plath, Anne Tyler, and John Updike, and helped launched new genres and trends in literature. At the forefront of the cookbook revolution, she published the who’s who of food writing: Edna Lewis, M.F.K. Fisher, Claudia Roden, Madhur Jaffrey, James Beard, and, most famously, Julia Child. Through her quiet and tenacious work behind the scenes, Jones helped turn these authors into household names, changing cultural mores and expectations along the way.
Judith’s work spanned decades of America’s most dramatic cultural change—from the end of World War II through the Cold War, from the civil rights movement to the fight for women’s equality—and the books she published acted as tools of quiet resistance. Now, her astonishing career is explored for the first time. Based on exclusive interviews, never-before-seen personal papers, and years of research, The Editor tells the riveting behind-the-scenes narrative of how stories are made, finally bringing to light the audacious life of one of our most influential tastemakers.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Sara B. Franklin is a writer, teacher, and oral historian. She received a 2020–2021 National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Public Scholars grant for her research on Judith Jones, and teaches courses on food, writing, embodied culture, and oral history at NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study. She is the author of The Editor, the editor of Edna Lewis, and coauthor of The Phoenicia Diner Cookbook. She holds a PhD in Food Studies from NYU and studied documentary storytelling at both the Duke Center for Documentary Studies and the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies. She lives with her children in Kingston, New York.
Jenn Sit is Executive Editor at Clarkson Potter, Penguin Random House, where she specializes in cooking- and drinks-focused books. Her roster includes numerous New York Times bestsellers, James Beard Award winners and finalists, and culinary tastemakers, such as Molly Baz, Ali Slagle, Maurizio Leo, Gina Homolka, Yossy Arefi, Pierre Thiam, and Aldo Sohm. Her forthcoming projects include books from Nina Compton, Roy Choi, Eric Adjepong, Carolina Gelen, André Mack, and Monique Volz. She also recently edited Corky Lee's Asian America, a groundbreaking collection of over 200 photos celebrating the history and cultural impact of the Asian American social justice movement.
COVID PROTOCOLS:
Rough Draft is no longer requiring masks or social distancing indoors. Event attendees are encouraged to monitor the CDC's guidance based on current community risk level in Ulster County, and to decide what precautions to take and what level of risk is appropriate for them.