April 3, 2013 Acclaimed author Jay McInerney is most noted for his many novels, including Bright Lights, Big City and The Last of the Savages, but he is also the wine columnist for The Wall Street Journal and has published three collections of essays from the column, including The Juice: Vinous Veritas, which will be released next week in paperback. Legendary Knopf editor Gary Fisketjon was a classmate of McInerney’s at Williams College who later revolutionized the publishing business with the creation Vintage Books, the first trade paperbacks. In addition to McInerney, he has edited a host of internationally acclaimed authors, including Raymond Carver, Annie Dillard, Richard Ford, Patricia Highsmith, Cormac McCarthy, Haruki Murakami, Richard Russo, Donna Tartt, Gore Vidal, and Tobias Wolff. He lives part-time in Leiper’s Fork, Tennessee, outside Nashville.
McInerney and Fisketjon will appear together on April 7 at the Nashville Public Library’s main branch in a program for the Nashville Writers Circle hosted by John Seigenthaler and William M. Akers. McInerney and Gary Fisketjon spoke by phone with Chapter 16—Fisketjon from his home in Leiper’s Fork, outside Nashville, and McInerney from his home in the Hamptons.
To read a transcript of this Q&A, click here.
