Well, this is a venture that grew out of friendly talk and then became a running joke of us doing a podcast about being minorities in publishing in the Whole Foods cheese section (we note our love of Whole Foods in our first episode) and then this niggling idea became "Hey why the hell not do this?" And when I mentioned it offhand to others or friends saw our "mock" tweets some said, "I'd listen to that if you did a podcast!" True story.
My friend and former co-worker Bev and I often discuss the lack of minorities in publishing as two people of color (POC) in publishing and said "We should do a podcast." Thinking on it more I reached out to Bev and said, "We really should do one" and she agreed.
And with that we started meeting. Talking logistics. Doing research on podcasts. Getting links with more links embedded in additional links noting what newbie podcasters should know. I made the logo with Bev's input (see above). And we kept thinking and meeting regularly and meeting tasks while assigning more tasks and it is now a real thing! How exciting is that?!
Bev is ON IT. She gets stuff done, which is how I knew I wanted to work with her and this podcast would be a reality, and not just an idea we spoke of for several months to a year and maybe got around to doing some research on but it wouldn't come to fruition.
And thus we have Minorities in Publishing (MiP)!
Bev and I recorded our first episode on Tuesday and it's available here on our Tumblr here.
I was a bit late to the game in terms of submitting it to iTunes but once we get the formal approval you'll be able to find it there as well.
In our first episode we discussed our backgrounds in the industry (over 20 years experience!) and reasoning for our podcast as well as what you can expect to hear in future podcasts, specifically interviews with publishing professionals on how publishing can be more inclusive in terms of diversity in publishing. And we do a mini bookclub for Roxane Gay's debut novel An Untamed State from Grove Atlantic.
We hope you'll listen, enjoy, share, chime in, contact us, visit our Tumblr, follow us on Twitter (@minoritiesinpub), and if anything support diversity in the arts and pursue it as a minority and/or advocate!