The Editor: How Publishing Legend Judith Jones Shaped Culture in America by Sara Franklin

The Editor: How Publishing Legend Judith Jones Shaped Culture in America
Legendary editor Judith Jones, the woman behind some of the most important authors of the 20th century—including Julia Child, Anne Frank, Edna Lewis, John Updike, and Sylvia Plath—finally gets her due in this “surprising, granular, luminous, and path-breaking biography” (Edward Hirsch, author of How to Read a Poem). At Doubleday’s Paris office in 1949, twenty-five-year-old Judith Jones spent most of her time wading through manuscripts in the slush pile and passing on projects—until one day, a book caught her eye. She read it in one sitting, then begged her boss to consider publishing it. A year later, Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl became a bestseller. It was the start of a culture-defining career in publishing. During her more than fifty years as an editor at Alfred A. Knopf, Jones nurtured the careers of literary icons such as Sylvia Plath, Anne Tyler, and John Updike, and helped launch new genres and trends in literature. At the forefront of the cookbook revolution, she published the who’s who of food writing: Edna Lewis, M.F.K. Fisher, Claudia Roden, Madhur Jaffrey, James Beard, and, most famously, Julia Child. Through her tenacious work behind the scenes, Jones helped turn these authors into household names, changing cultural mores and expectations along the way. Judith’s work spanned decades of America’s most dramatic cultural change—from the end of World War II through the civil rights movement and the fight for women’s equality—and the books she published acted as tools of quiet resistance. Now, based on exclusive interviews, never-before-seen personal papers, and years of research, her astonishing career is explored for the first time in this “thorough and humanizing portrait” (Kirkus Reviews).

About the Speakers

Sara B. Franklin is a nationally-bestselling writer and a professor at New York University’s Gallatin School for Individualized Study, where she teaches courses on food, oral history, embodied culture, and non-fiction writing. She has written for publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Literary Hub, The Nation, and Travel & Leisure. Her work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Sara’s writing and teaching are informed by her training in history, community health, and documentary studies. Before turning to writing and teaching full-time, she worked as an organic vegetable farmer, a restaurant critic, an urban agriculture instructor, a research consultant at the American Museum of Natural History, and a grassroots anti-poverty and sustainable agriculture advocate nationally across the U.S., as well as in South Africa and Brazil. Sara holds a PhD in Food Studies from New York University and a BA in history and community health from Tufts University.

Jessica Carbone is a Boston-based writer, editor, and food historian, and she recently joined America’s Test Kitchen as their managing editor of digital content. She previously worked as a contributing editor of books coverage at SAVEUR, as a member of the food history team at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, and as a cookbook editor at Clarkson Potter and Alfred A. Knopf, where she was trained by Judith Jones. She has a PhD in American Studies from Harvard University, and has taught food-focused courses and workshops at Johnson & Wales, Harvard University, and in the Gastronomy program at Boston University.
Jonathan Duval is the Assistant Curator of Architecture & Design at the MIT Museum. Most recently, he curated the exhibition “Drawing After Modernism,” which examines architectural drawings of the 1980s through the lens of collecting. His research focuses on the history of architectural practice and pedagogy, architectural representation and graphics, and the bureaucratic intersections of architecture and technology. In addition to the MIT Museum, Jon has held curatorial positions, internships, and fellowships at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Sir John Soane’s Museum, and the RISD Museum. He studied architectural history at Tufts University and Brown University and is on the Board of Directors of the New England chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians.