“You only have to find one editor who shares your vision”: A Conversation with Jonathan Lee, Editor in Chief of Catapult Books

“The goal isn’t to please the whole world.”

Jonathan Lee is the editor in chief of Catapult Books and an award-winning, internationally bestselling novelist. His third novel, High Dive, was named a best book of the year by The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Guardian, and many other publications; his next, The Great Mistake, will be published in June 2021. Last month, Jonathan and I chatted about his path to publishing, his advice for aspiring book editors, and what writers should know about pitching their projects to Catapult.

Nicole Chung: How would you describe Catapult’s identity as a press? What do you think authors should know about it, and what (if anything in particular) makes a Catapult book?

Jonathan Lee: We hope the Catapult list is a space where diverse, risk-taking writers from all over the world can collide and be in conversation. I think we’re very good at a few things. One is launching international writers alongside essential American voices. Another is finding an audience for mid-career authors, alongside brilliant new and emerging writers. Our list is deliberately small, so we can focus on each book and try to tailor ourselves to being its perfect publisher—on the Catapult list we put out only around ten works of literary fiction a year, alongside ten works of literary nonfiction—but one of the pleasures of the list is it’s so varied. In a given year, we might publish Mexican American novelist Chloe Aridjis’ Sea Monsters (which went on to be her breakout book, winning the PEN/Faulkner Award last year), then Jokha Alharthi’s Celestial Bodies, the first book by a female Omani author ever to be translated into English (it won the Man Booker International Prize!), then a brilliantly written, conversation-starting work of nonfiction edited by Megha Majumdar like Noé Alvarez’s Spirit Run or Ruby Hamad’s White Tears/ Brown Scars, then a darkly atmospheric novel translated from the German which ends up being a surprise finalist for the National Book Awards (High As The Waters Rise, edited by Kendall Storey). And we might follow those books up with Tola Rotimi Abraham’s wonderful Black Sunday, then a perfectly acerbic American debut novel about contemporary culture like Lauren Oyler’s Fake Accounts, which is everywhere right now. What all these Catapult writers have in common, I think, is two things: they truly care for the craft of writing, and their work has serious questions it wants to grapple with. And nothing they can ever do to answer any of those questions is ever enough—so Catapult authors tend to keep writing.

Catapult as a company is also lucky to be in a unique position among American publishers. We are not just three imprints (Catapult, Counterpoint, and Soft Skull.) We are a company that publishes a National Magazine Award-winning magazine (the one you are reading now!), and which runs a very successful classes program. The magazine and classes program have both proved to be great ways for us to discover and support new writers, and reach new readers. It feels great when it all comes together.

NC: What are some things writers should know and think about when pitching their books?

JL: Be sincere. Be passionate. Be as generous to those reading your work as you hope they will be to you. Be concise—maybe let the work itself do most of your talking. And pitch us a book project because it’s the one you’re dying to write, not because it’s the one that you think will be popular. Around 2,000 book-length submissions cross our desks each year from literary agents alone, and with many of those I read, I can end up feeling the author’s heart wasn’t really in it. I really want to find your heart in it.

One other thing to keep in mind, with any submission to any publisher, is that you only have to find one editor who shares your vision. It’s a very specific matchmaking process. The goal isn’t to please the whole world. It’s easy to forget that. And to that end, if you can, it’s great to read a book or two by the publisher you are submitting to, in an effort to ascertain whether they might be a good fit for your own work.

NC: Asking because I get this question, on occasion, from writers: Do you have to have an agent for Catapult to consider your book?

JL: The short answer is no. Lots of our writers were unagented when we first made offers on their manuscripts. Some come to us through publishing first in Catapult magazine, or by participating in the Catapult classes program, or through referrals, or because we’ve read a piece of theirs we love and reached out.

The longer answer is that a good literary agent adds tremendous value to an author’s career. If you can get an agent like Anna Stein, Claudia Ballard, Julia Kardon, Nicole Aragi, Alia Hanna Habib, or Meredith Simonoff (among many others!) to represent you, it is probably going to be a great thing for your career. Most of our authors end up signing with agents sooner rather than later.

NC: What sorts of projects are you especially hoping to acquire in the next few years?

JL: I want to continue publishing a mix of new, emerging and established writers across fiction and nonfiction. And I want those writers to be so unusual—stylistically, and/or in the points of view they bring to bear—that when I print out one of their drafts and chew on my pen, pretending I have what my dad calls “a real job,” I won’t be able to stop underlining little sentence-fragments, surprising specificities of thought and language, provocative ideas, moments of unsettling investigation into a status quo or way of being in the world. Writers like Chelsea Bieker, Jon McGregor, Jokha Alharthi, Chibundu Onuzo, Maria Gainza. On the nonfiction side, I’ve just acquired new books by Melissa Febos, Dina Nayeri, and Jennifer Croft that I’m really excited by. If I had one wish, it would be that more nonfiction book submissions crossed my desk that are as attentive to language as they are to the story they are telling. When that happens, it’s a tremendously exciting combination.

NC: What unique opportunities do you see for Catapult as a relatively young independent press?

JL: We are a five-year-old press that has very quickly established itself among readers, booksellers and literary critics. It’s hard to think of examples of other presses that have come so far in just five years. That puts us in a great position to do an even better job championing our authors over the next five years, but also brings a weight of responsibility. I can only speak for the editorial side, but I think the aim isn’t to grow the list of books we publish. It’s to do a better and better job at being the perfect champions for each of the books we publish. By keeping ourselves small and independent, we hope we can stay nimble and passionate. And we are lucky to have an amazing team here, from our Publicity Director Megan Fishmann and her team through to a great sales and marketing staff, design team (Nicole Caputo’s covers are amazing!), and production team. We now have, as a company, a staff that I think most publishers would envy. Coming out of 2020 and its challenges, I think we’re all pretty tired! But new books are always there to energize us. (Also coffee, and tuna straight out of the can.)

NC: Can you talk about how you became an editor?

JL: I was supposed to be a centre-forward for Liverpool F.C. but I suffered that terrible injury they call lack of talent. So instead I worked as a litigation lawyer at a big firm in London called Freshfields for several years, before realizing I didn’t like being a lawyer. Then for a while I worked for the British Council as their Literature Advisor. Then I started writing, and when my writing got some recognition that kind of opened the literary world up to me, a bit. (When I first published my first stories and essays, I’d never met a published writer before, except in a signing queue at a reading or two.) It was writing that led me into editing, ultimately. I worked as an editor at various literary magazines before joining Catapult. One of my first acquisitions was Hermione Hoby’s Neon In Daylight, and I remember the thrill of Parul Sehgal comparing her to Joan Didion in The New York Times. Another early acquisition was Jon McGregor’s Reservoir 13, and it was very exciting when it was listed for the Booker Prize. I got pretty lucky early on, and therefore I was hooked.

NC: In addition to being editor in chief of Catapult Books, you’ve written several novels and have a new one on the way. How do you find it works for you, balancing those two related but distinct careers? (As an editor who writes/writer who edits, I’m obviously looking for you to tell me that it’s really, really challenging, and it’s okay if it doesn’t always go especially well.)

JL: I do find the balance really challenging. When I read interviews in which people talk about getting up early every day, I find it a real yawn. But the truth is that’s the only way I have found that works for me: I write between 5 a.m and 7 a.m. every day, if my kids consent to stay asleep during that stretch, and I don’t do anything else during that time except for drink coffee and listen, half in fear and half in excitement, for the sound of tiny footsteps emerging upstairs. If writing doesn’t come, I read a book instead. I feel like reading is the best kind of writing that isn’t writing. It keeps you fit for when the writing finally comes, and is also the best pastime on earth, if the book is good.

And these days, I think it’s okay when the writing doesn’t come. I used to beat myself up about the weeks when I didn’t hit a certain word count. Now it just seems absurd to me. I have a family member who says to me, each time I publish a novel, “Wow, how many words are in that book?” And I say something like, “Eighty thousand words, but some are repeats.” And they say, “Amazing!” And that’s the whole conversation! You can win an award and sell movie rights or whatever, but the whole achievement, in this relative of mine’s mind, is: How many words did he write in this book? Eighty thousand? That’s huge! Congrats! Then I realized that’s exactly what I’d been equating success with myself, by focusing on those stupid weekly word counts. So I stopped.

NC: Any advice for aspiring editors or other folks who want to work in publishing?

JL: Everyone comes from a different background and with a different set of experiences, but I do think it helps to be an obsessive reader before you try to become an obsessive editor or writer. If you’re devouring books from your local library or indie bookstore, in whatever free time you are able to find, that’s a start. And then, if you can, finding a community you can share your interest with. The source of that community might be a small magazine, a classes program you get a scholarship to, a local bookstore or library book club, a reading series near you (or online), or your local branch of an organization like PEN America. There are lots of ways now to be less alone in your love of books, and I think we all hope those avenues become more accessible to more people.

The other thing I sometimes recommend is reading this essay by Joy Williams, “Uncanny The Singing That Comes From Certain Husks.” It’s an excellent essay on the art of writing, and rewriting, and by association editing. It includes a cameo of Don DeLillo as a shark.