To The Bright Edge of the World by Eowyn Ivey

With To the Bright Edge of the World, our editorial conversation started when all I had was a skeleton outline and I think, like, 50 pages. The Snow Child came to you both as a complete manuscript, and as I recall the edits were extremely important but relatively painless. Ivey: Yes, it was such a different process for the two books. Of course it was easy for Mary-Anne and me to know we wanted to publish this novel – now it was up to Eowyn to keep writing it beyond the early pages she showed us at the outset. It was a more epic story, with more historical and geographical detail, and more complicated – but with some of the same hallmarks that made her first novel so indelible: the Alaskan wilderness, the complications of married love, and a slightly mystical element rooted in the landscape and its people. When it came time to talk about Eowyn’s second novel – often a daunting prospect for authors and publishers alike, especially when the first has gone so well – she came to us with an idea that was very different from The Snow Child. Eowyn’s agent, Jeff Kleinman, was always a valuable voice along the way. We had so much fun and success with her first novel, The Snow Child, which Andrea Walker acquired and edited, and which Mary-Anne Harrington also published in the U.K., lending an editorial assist. With Eowyn Ivey, while I can think of few people more purely capable of doing just about anything, that’s been the case, and happily so. Arthur: As a wise woman once (or twice) said, it takes a village.

To The Bright Edge of the World by Eowyn Ivey