Hello, dear readers --
This week I want to give thanks to a few people who have made the research process for this book so much easier than it could have been.
In late October, as I was staring down the barrel of 50+ interviews, I decided to ask for help, and I put out a call for people who could help me transcribe some of those interviews. Transcribing can be time-consuming, tedious work, and I didn’t want to cut interviews short, and miss out on really important information, just because I dreaded transcribing a long one.
A few weeks and 32 interviews later, I’m so thankful for the five people who have made it possible for me to focus just on talking to sources and not on transcribing: Laurie Batzel, Paige Cornwell, Kitty Guo, Ashley Patrick, and Catherine Trautwein. They’re all responsive, thorough, efficient, and accurate, and I’m very lucky to work with them. If you’re after a research assistant to help with transcripts, I recommend hiring any and all of them.
Laurie Batzel has worked as a park ranger at a national historic site, a physical therapist assistant in hospitals and skilled nursing facilities, and is now a published romance novelist (With My Soul, Anaiah Press, 2019). She danced ballet for twenty years and says they were some of the most joyful in her life. “Ballet taught me discipline, humility, and gave me a sense of self-determination that I believe not only makes me a better writer, but makes me a better wife and mother, the two most important roles in which I've ever been cast.” You can follow her @lbatc2_lou
Paige Cornwell is a reporter at The Seattle Times, where she writes about the impacts of the region's growth on longtime residents and new transplants. She was on the Times' team that won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news for its coverage of the deadly landslide in Oso, Washington. She grew up in Kansas City and graduated from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She trained as a dancer throughout her childhood - ballet is her first love - and enjoys taking dance classes in Seattle. She remains horrified of the costumes she and her classmates wore for their recitals. Here she is at age 7:
You can follow her @pgcornwell. She’s available for hire and can be reached at pgcornwell@gmail.com.
Kitty Guo is a senior at the University of Southern California studying journalism and linguistics. She danced ballet for 15 years, starting as a tiny little 3-year-old in creative movement class. She is interested in reading and writing stories in the realm of dance, fashion, beauty, arts, and culture. She aspires to one day become GQ’s in-house celebrity profiler. Find her at kittyguo.com and on Twitter @kitguo. She’s open to more transcribing work and to full-time job opportunities when she graduates in May. Here’s baby Kitty:
Ashley Patrick is a freelance editor, copyeditor, and literary critic. With more than a decade of editorial experience, she has worked for W. W. Norton, the Ohio State University Press, BrainPOP, Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art, and was managing editor of Bookslut. She holds an MFA in nonfiction and literary translation from Columbia University and lives in Brooklyn with her husband and three children. You can follow her @akepatronyak.
Catherine Trautwein is a senior writer at the Council on Foreign Relations. She has previously worked as a journalist at WNYC, PBS Frontline, TIME and Myanmar’s first English-language daily newspaper, The Myanmar Times. She is an alumna of Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism and Northwestern University. When she’s not writing, Catherine can mostly be found watching Netflix (Parks and Recreation, Dance Academy). She’s on Twitter @CTspeaks and is interested in more transcription work.
What a crew, right? Hire them, pay them whatever they want.
And I’m thankful to the paying subscribers of this newsletter. You helped make it possible for me to pay these folks $15 an hour and not worry about letting an interview run long if it’s taking a while for a dancer to get comfortable talking.
While my advance was by no means small, it wasn’t - and I never expected it to be - quit-your-job money. Or, in my case, jobs plural. I’m still editing breaking stories for VICE News in the mornings and writing about politics for MarieClaire.com and teaching for The OpEd Project. Time is precious, and so is the money that allows me to pay other people for theirs. So thank you. I appreciate it so much.
I hope you had a lovely Thanksgiving, if and however you celebrated it. Thanks for reading.
Chloe.