Pryor Center Presents 'Tell Me a Story: Many Paths to Book Publication'

Andrew Kilgore

Masie Cochran

The Pryor Center Presents lecture series presented by the David and Barbara Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences continues Thursday, March 10, with "Tell Me a Story – Many Paths to Book Publication" featuring Masie Cochran, U of A alumna and editorial director at Tin House Books. 

This lecture will be held at 6 p.m. via Zoom. Please register in advance with an email that is associated with an active Zoom account.

Cochran's 45-minute talk will offer a behind-the-scenes look into the world of publishing — first drafts, finding an agent, acquisitions, editing, book covers, reviews, sales and awards. Cochran joined Tin House 11 years ago after previously working at Inkwell Management, a literary agency in New York City. She has worked in a variety of genres: memoir, literary fiction, narrative non-fiction, and short story and essay collections.

Cochran has edited many award-winning and bestselling titles, including the intricately plotted novels of Claire Fuller, an Obama Best Book of the Year pick (Cory Taylor's Dying: A Memoir), E.J. Koh's family saga The Magical Language of Others, Annie Hartnett's darkly funny Rabbit Cake, Rosalie Knecht's genre-bending Vera Kelly detective series, Jeannie Vanasco's unsparing memoirs (Things We Didn't Talk About When I Was a Girl and The Glass Eye), the Gothic novels of Paraic O'Donnell (The House on Vesper Sands and The Maker of Swans) and Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi's acclaimed novel, A Girl is a Body of Water. 

Books Cochran has edited have garnered attention from the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic and NPR's Fresh Air and Morning Edition. These authors have won prizes that include the Aspen Words Literary Prize, the Costa Novel Prize, the Edgar Award, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and have been finalists for the National Book Award for nonfiction, the National Book Critics Circle Award and PEN Literary Awards. 

Forthcoming authors include Joy Williams, Kim Fu, Sarah Krasnostein, Courtney Maum, Morgan Talty, María José Ferrada and Elizabeth Brooks.

Upcoming Pryor Center Presents

Thursday, April 14, 6 p.m.
Pryor Center Presents "'The Language of State Will: Research Conclusions from Through the Heart of the City: Interstates and Black Geographies in Urban America'" featuring Airic Hughes

Thursday, June 16, 6 p.m.
Pryor Center Presents "Arkansas News History: Exploring the KATV Collection" with Randy Dixon and Kyle Kellams

About The David and Barbara Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History: The David and Barbara Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History is an oral history program with the mission to document the history of Arkansas through the collection of spoken memories and visual records, preserve the collection in perpetuity, and connect Arkansans and the world to the collection through the Internet, TV broadcasts, educational programs, and other means. The Pryor Center records audio and video interviews about Arkansas history and culture, collects other organizations' recordings, organizes these recordings into an archive, and provides public access to the archive, primarily through the website at pryorcenter.uark.edu. The Pryor Center is the state's only oral and visual history program with a statewide, seventy-five county mission to collect, preserve, and share audio and moving image recordings of Arkansas history.

About the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences: The Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences is the largest and most academically diverse unit on campus with three schools, 16 departments and 43 academic programs and research centers. The college provides the majority of the core curriculum for all University of Arkansas students.

About the University of Arkansas: As Arkansas' flagship institution, the U of A provides an internationally competitive education in more than 200 academic programs. Founded in 1871, the U of A contributes more than $2.2 billion to Arkansas' economy through the teaching of new knowledge and skills, entrepreneurship and job development, discovery through research and creative activity while also providing training for professional disciplines. The Carnegie Foundation classifies the U of A among the top 3% of U.S. colleges and universities with the highest level of research activity. U.S. News & World Report ranks the U of A among the top public universities in the nation. See how the U of A works to build a better world at Arkansas Research News.