A couple weeks ago, Khalil A. Cassimally told me to check out Claire Zulkey's site. I read her funny, funny blog posts and smart interviews, and I knew she'd be the perfect guest.Today, Zulkey the Interviewer gets interviewed about interviewing.
If you want to see Zulkey the Writer (and happen to live in Chicago), check out Jami Attenberg and Zulkey's "Midwestern Ladies Auxiliary Love Revue" at the The Hideout.
For all the rest of us not-living-in-the-Midwest-eners, welcome to my deceptively simple feature: Five Easy Questions. In the spirit of Jack Nicholson’s mad piano player, I run a serialized set of weekly interviews with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web publishing...
Jason Boog:
I love your interviews with writers as well. How do you choose your ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY subjects? What are the three most important things you've learned from interviewing these writers?
Claire Zulkey:
When I began, it was family and friends, because that was who I knew and could get... It was pretty fun, too, to do Q and A's with people I already knew and to see how they responded. Also, there were a lot of Internet authors who some of my writing friends knew also.
I interviewed Neal Pollack a few years ago and that opened up to having access to some slightly more well-known authors than, say, my mom (because I could say "I've interviewed authors such as Neal Pollack," and then I could say "I've interviewed authors such as Neal Pollack and Arthur Bradford, etc." ).
It depends now, who gets interviewed.
Sometimes it will be somebody who I find interesting or whose work I like and I just Google them and track them down. Other times I will have no idea who to try for so I'll check the NYT bestseller list and contact an author.
It's hard to narrow it down to three things, especially since my interviews are so long, but I guess:
1-Being cutesy doesn't work well with all interviewees.
2-People are still Googling James Frey a lot.
3-Phone interviews are much harder than email interviews, even though most reporters say email interviews are much lazier (which is why they're probably easier).
Want to know how Zulkey built her long list of published articles?
Tune in tomorrow for another exciting installment of Five Easy Questions for Claire Zulkey...
» Five Easy Questions: Claire Zulkey, Part Three from ThePublishingSpot
On the heels of Britney Spears' tearful television interview last week, Claire Zulkey sharpened her writing knives and chopped the singer into a million funny pieces:"At first she was reluctant to show off her kid Sean Preston, and now... [Read More]
Tracked on: June 21, 2006 9:30 AM | Permalink to Trackback