Elizabeth McCracken Traces the Life of a First Edition

My first book was published quietly. By which I mean: the imprint that had bought it was by publication day shuttered; everyone I knew had left the company; my book—a collection of stories called Here’s Your Hat What’s Your Hurry—came into the world with the colophon of a ghost, the last of its kind. But it was published. I had a nice new editor at Random House proper who, when I met her, apologetically handed me my first review, which had just been faxed over. It called me “able.”