special section ▪ LITERARY AGENTS53 POETS & WRITERS^publication date—Anjali joined Arif
on a conference call with the public-
ity team at Atria to brainstorm ideas
for articles and essays Arif might write
and try to place in newspapers, maga-
zines, or websites to boost awareness of
the book. Arif was also asked to supply
Atria with names for a “big-mouth list”
that might include organizations work-
ing with or interested in Bangladesh, as
well as writers he admires.
“Big mouths” is an industry term
for anyone—writers, editors, bloggers,
and people with a large following on
social media—in a position to spread
the word about a book. These people
are often on a list that the publicity de-
partment uses for a targeted mailing of
finished copies of a book, sometimes
accompanied by a personal note from
the author or editor.
When I ask Anjali whether Arif was
doing enough in the lead-up to publi-
cation, I don’t even have to finish my
question. “Oh my God—the whole
time Arif was like, ‘This is what I want
to be doing. Tell me what I can do. I’ll
do anything you want me to do.’” The
book received starred reviews from Li-
brary Journal and Booklist as well as a
rave from Publishers Weekly calling it an
excellent debut: “This first novel will
touch and astound readers.”
Still, momentum can be difficult to
sustain, and while the novel received
some terrific blurbs from authors such
as best-selling author Shilpi Somaya
Gowda and novelist Rumaan Alam,
and a positive review in the Ne w York
Times Book Review, albeit two months
after the publication date, it just didn’t
quite reach the heights that Anjali
and, certainly, Arif were hoping for.
Everyone, of course, is hoping for a
best-seller. “Some really nice things
happened, like the reviews, which made
us hope it was poised for more, but for
whatever reason...we just never got a
sense of momentum,” Anjali writes to
me after our breakfast. “I think it was
both a success in the fact that we found
editors who championed this book and
published it beautifully; Arif is now an
‘author’ with some lovely reviews under
his belt, one who has begun to make
meaningful connections with readers
at book clubs and the various festivals
he was invited to; and he now has a pa-
perback to sell the hell out of. I think
as the agent, along with Ayesha, and as
someone who loved this book and who
thinks if more people knew it existed itwould have a stronger readership, it’s
hard not to feel some small sense of
disappointment that the book wasn’t a
best-seller, even though I do know how
hard that is to achieve. Our hope is that
Arif’s career will continue to grow, and
as it does, more readers will discover
and fall in love with this book.”
I ask Anjali if she has any advice for
writers looking for an agent, and she
doesn’t hesitate. “The best thing you
can do is be really intentional about who
you approach,” she says. “It’s doing all
that work to write a really good query
letter. It’s also doing all that work to
think about what books your book sits
alongside. And who you aspire to be
as a writer.” This will be a recurring
theme as I talk to the agents—this idea
of intentionality, of doing the work of
figuring out who you are as a person, as
a writer, and how you want to direct that
out into the world before you approach
agents. “There’s a reason why you spent
all of these years writing this book. If
you can explain to me why you cared so
much, it’s going to help me understand
why I should care. And I think that is
a kind of self-knowledge. I feel like by
the time you write that query letter, you
have to excavate that and articulate it.”M
AKING my way up Delancey
Street, a few blocks from
the sublet apartment where
I laid my head during my
first month in New York City—fresh
out of an M FA program, little money,
no prospects—I’m having difficulty
matching the glass-encased con-
dominium complex and the fancy
Regal multiplex with my memory
of the boarded-up storefronts and
dirty brick facades of the Lower
East Side in the late 1990s. But I
don’t have a lot of time for nos-
talgia because I’m on my way to
Russ & Daughters Cafe to meet
Emily Forland, and she gave me
explicit instructions to not be
late. My punctuality has long
been a point of pride, but Iunderstand her urgency; the restau-
rant, which opened in 2014, on the
hundredth anniversary of the original
Russ & Daughters appetizing store,
located two blocks away, on Houston
Street, doesn’t take reservations. And
it’s always busy. But Emily has called
in a favor. She is the agent not of Joel
Russ of Russ & Daughters (he died
in 1961), nor his daughters (the last
of them, Anne Russ Federman, died
last year at the age of ninety-seven),
but rather his grandson Mark Russ Fe-
derman, who wrote a memoir, Russ &
Daughters: Reflections and Recipes From
the House That Herring Built (Schocken,
2013), and whose daughter and nephew
opened the restaurant to which I am
headed posthaste.
I find Emily waiting a bit nervouslyTue s day
12:30
PMRuss & Daughters Cafe
127 Orchard Street▪ Whitefish Croquettes: smoked
whitefish, potato, tartar sauce
▪ Pickled Herring Trio: canapés of
pickled herring on pumpernickel
▪ Lower Sunny Side: eggs, sunny-
side up; Gaspé nova smoked
salmon, potato latkes
▪ Challah bread pudding: dried
apricots, caramel sauce; Halvah
ice cream: halvah, sesame,
salted caramel
▪ Cream soda: vanilla bean–
infused demerara sugar; Concord
grape soda: jasmine, timut pepper,
lemon