KENNEDY

As the publisher and cofounder, can you tell us a bit about your journey with Lookout Books? What’s the imprint’s story, and what brought you to UNCW?

EMILY

I’ve been asked this question in various forms over Lookout’s fifteen-year history, but I still love answering it because our story keeps evolving. I cofounded Lookout in 2009 as a haven for overlooked and underrepresented voices, partly in response to the literary and cultural climate at the time. The newly founded organization VIDA: Women in Literary Arts had begun calling attention to disparities in representation across magazines and review outlets, and as a recently minted MFA seeking homes for my own poems and trying to find my way in publishing, I felt those statistics firsthand. So from the beginning, I wanted every Lookout acquisition to be intentional. We sought projects that seemed most likely to benefit from editorial care and collaboration—and authors excited about that approach.

My first few years teaching, I made a habit of informally polling students about their penchant for reading via Kindle or other tablets, and every semester, more hands went up. Meanwhile, I loathed the idea of my book dinging a reminder about a looming meeting or dentist appointment. So Lookout focused on producing books that would return readers to the printed page—paperback originals with French flaps, attention to cover design and typographic nuance—books as beautiful to hold as they are to read.

And maybe most of all, I wanted to build a teaching press that would offer students meaningful opportunities, right here in North Carolina, to hone their craft and to practice literary stewardship, without the financial burden of a New York internship. As director of UNCW’s Publishing Laboratory, I’d spent my early career shepherding regional-interest books to publication alongside students, but I also knew that they longed for experience with novels and memoirs, as well as story, poetry, and essay collections. Lookout’s early partnership with Ecotone allowed us to expand into those areas of publishing.

That’s still Lookout’s origin story—and mine at UNCW—but to our founding ethos I now add this: We’re much more adept at nurturing authors in the promising early stages of their careers. In my grant-writing course and practicum, I work with students to develop proposals that support authors in offering community workshops during their book tours. I help place individual stories and poems in magazines, in addition to author interviews and essays. Lookout students have built three custom author websites, all still going strong. We’ve published three anthologies that place the work of emerging contributors in conversation with established authors. And I’ve come to accept—even reluctantly celebrate—that the more successful we are in helping authors realize their books and build their platform, the more likely we are to lose them to houses with more resources and the scale to better support their expanded readership.

Meanwhile, alumni of Lookout lead imprints and magazines across the country, as well as literary nonprofits. They’re disrupting and reimagining outdated models, founding their own presses, reading series, and writing centers. I’ve said this elsewhere, but it’s truer than ever: my students’ initiatives are as much Lookout’s legacy as the authors and books we’ve published.

KENNEDY

How would you say your experience with UNCW’s MFA program prepared you to work in the publishing industry? Outside of MFA programs, how else can people prepare for a publishing career?

EMILY

I’m a proud product of UNCW’s Publishing Laboratory, which has been a design and editorial playground since its inception, when I was a TA under founder Stanley Colbert and then director Barbara Brannon. Launching Ecotone in 2005, alongside faculty editor David Gessner and my friends and fellow student editors Kimi Faxon Hemingway and Heather Wilson, taught me the joy of collaboration. I remember brainstorming the magazine’s original definition and subtitle, how we wanted the magazine to look and feel in our hands. We laughed a lot in that defunct science lab—the Pub Lab’s then home—as we envisioned this serious journal we planned to make. That spirit of play and innovation inspired me as I founded Lookout and continues to guide me as I join Lookout’s now editor, KaToya Ellis Fleming, in acquiring new projects and facilitating all kinds of creative promotions that our students dream up—from letterpress broadsides to custom lapel pins. 

After my MFA, I earned a yearlong fellowship with South Carolina’s award-winning Hub City Press. Cofounders John Lane, who got his start at Copper Canyon, and journalist Betsy Teter were instrumental in shaping my philosophy of publishing as community. I hung on Betsy’s every word as she edited books and negotiated with printers and wooed local philanthropists to support the press. My request to sit with Hub City’s graphic designer while he worked led to me designing many of my own covers and interiors for the press. As I continued to freelance and build relationships there, I eventually went on to direct their annual conference, Writing in Place, for several years after the fellowship ended.

So my advice is to seek out apprenticeships in publishing. Many independent presses and literary journals offer them, including, just to name a few: Feminist Press, Graywolf, Hub City, Milkweed, One Story, A Public Space, and Tin House. The big five offer internships, sometimes remotely, as well. Beyond that, read and research, learn the houses, imprints, and journals doing work you believe in. Find someone you respect on the masthead and don’t be afraid to reach out; ask if you can read manuscripts or proofread or contribute in some meaningful way that will also develop your skills.

KENNEDY

As both an instructor and a publisher, you have the immense task of balancing a classroom environment and the production of an entire imprint. How does your experience as a publisher inform your perspective as a creative writing professor?

EMILY

As an instructor, my goal is to help students contextualize publishing as a collaborative extension of their writing—to see these facets as part of a shared ecosystem. So often students enter my classroom thinking of editors and publishers as their nemeses. I get it. It’s increasingly difficult to pass through the gates, to navigate contests and submissions—not to say anything of rejections—to find representation and the right editor. But I teach editing, design, marketing, and professional writing to demystify the publishing process and empower students, so that they’ll better understand how we come into community when we publish. I want them to experience the magic that happens when a traditional publisher—whether it’s an indie or an imprint of the big five—believes in your book and pours their collective energy and creativity into realizing it with you.

I love author Hanif Abdurraqib’s description of this: “I decided I wanted to be very good at this book,” he writes of There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension. “Not just the writing of it, I decided I wanted to be very good at living alongside it, at living a life that honored everything that went into making it, the lengths I went in order to chase after a book I couldn’t even describe to myself, let alone anyone else . . . To be as present in interviews or on stage or in signing lines as I was on the page, as I was in the dreaming . . . and, lucky for me, an entire team of people, agent and editors and publicists and cover designers and and and all, without speaking, picked up on my desire to be very good at this and, without me asking, decided they’d like to be good at it too.”

So you could say that I approach the teaching of writing as an extension of my work as a publisher. I support students in being very good at their books, and I try to be very good at their books with them. I help them advocate for and contextualize their work. Or as Lookout author Valerie Boyd, whose editorial work and mentorship I deeply admired, always put it: I try to gate bash rather than gatekeep.

KENNEDY

Lookout’s 2025 book, A Love Tap, is a poetry collection from debut author Bernardo Wade. What drew you to Bernardo’s work specifically? What themes and ideas can readers expect to explore in A Love Tap?

EMILY

Bernardo’s writing came to my attention through Ecotone’s climate issue, in which we published his poem “Requiem for Guy,” an evocative eulogy to a friend set in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Hearing him read it aloud, along with other poems, during the launch was such a persuasive introduction to his work. I then read every single Bernardo Wade poem I could find in literary journals before writing what we affectionately call a “Lookout love letter,” asking whether he was working on a manuscript and might be interested in talking with KaToya and me about publishing it.

A Love Tap pulses with everything that first drew me to Bernardo’s work: the vibrancy of New Orleans, its music and art, food and people; his nuanced portraits of friends and family, particularly fathers and father figures. His complex yet disarmingly conversational poems swagger on the page. They sweet talk the reader into reveling with him in the joy and tenderness of young men with scars and peach fuzz—hoopers jostling, boys peacocking, a son shaking. Even when grappling with racial injustice, addiction, or the enduring effects of hurricanes on his beloved hometown, his lines turn with grace, intimacy, and power. I hear his laugh ring out mid stanza.

KENNEDY

When selecting books for publication, what do you typically look for in submissions? What’s your process for reading queries and deciding when to solicit authors?

EMILY

We read first to be sure that submissions speak to Lookout’s mission in some vital way, then to confirm that we’re in love with the overall project and writing, and finally that we’re uniquely equipped to support it and bring it to readers. I always ask: Am I excited to discuss this project in class every week for the next year or so? Am I invested thoroughly enough to bring my full attention, expertise, and research to it? Will it support my teaching and afford my students meaningful educational experiences? Beyond that, it’s important to KaToya and me that each acquisition thoughtfully extends our mission beyond our current catalog.

Lookout’s titles often find their way to us through a path like Bernardo’s: We love working with authors through Ecotone and invite their book-length manuscripts for consideration. Or we’re introduced to an author’s project at a conference or writing retreat and can’t stop thinking about it back at home. We always welcome agented submissions, and we’ve twice opened a special reading period for authors without representation. Last year, we announced Lookout’s inaugural editorial advisory board, a group of respected authors and publishing professionals—Gerald Maa, Megha Majumdar, Cassie Mannes Murray, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Deesha Philyaw, and Sumanth Prabhaker—who also help us scout for promising projects.

Because our in-house team is so small—just a handful of publishing faculty and students in UNCW’s program—and because we work exclusively, tirelessly on a single book a year, prospective authors need to share our community and educational ethos. Which is to say, we need to be a really good fit.