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Literary Agent and Editor

Susan Rabiner

SUSAN RABINER
March 6, 2002
(Wednesday)

8:00 p.m. Discussion


Recital Hall, PAC
UAlbany, Uptown Campus



(Note: No 4:00 p.m. Seminar)
Thinking Like Your Editor: How to Write Serious Nonfiction and Get It Published

Susan Rabiner, editor and literary agent, and former editorial director at Basic Books (a division of Harper Collins), has worked with such acclaimed, best-selling authors as Iris Chang (The Rape of Nanking), Lawrence Krauss (The Physics of Star Trek), John Allen Paulos (A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper), and Herbert Bix (Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan), the 2001 Pulitzer Prize winner for nonfiction, who called Thinking Like Your Editor, "the standard text for non-fiction authors."

Rabiner's first book co-written with freelance editor and writer (and hubby) Alfred Fortunato, is Thinking Like Your Editor: How to Write Great Serious Nonfiction--and Get it Published (2002). Between them, Rabiner and Fortunato have helped publish hundreds of books, and they reveal all their gathered trade secrets here. "Whatever the topic, from history to business, science to philosophy, law, or gender studies, this book is vital to every serious nonfiction writer," says Amazon.com. The book instructs its readers in everything from crafting a nonfiction proposal to choosing an agent, and offers additional suggestions for the style and ordering of the writing as well.

Rabiner began her career at Random House and later worked as an editor at Oxford University Press, Pantheon Books, and St. Martin's Press. She then became the editorial director at Basic Books before becoming a literary agent and starting her own firm with co-author and husband Alfred Fortunato.

"Hopeful writers will be the primary audience for this title, and they will find useful advice on every page, but a secondary audience could include avid consumers of nonfiction who want to understand why some ideas reach book form while others do not." - Publishers Weekly

Writers Online Magazine Article