ENDORSEMENTS
When I think back to the moments in my life when I began to
realize I wanted to be a writer, I remember that I was a
young man who was in love with the idea of writing, in love
with reading and, above all, in love with the idea of
others seeing me as a writer.
None of these passions ever helped me write a single thing.
And so I was lazy and I didn’t finish things and I had no
idea what I wanted to write about. It was my good fortune,
then, to encounter Steven Bauer as a professor in my junior
year at Miami University, where he taught me advanced
fiction – a class that so profoundly shook my world, that I
enrolled in it again, just to experience Steven’s presence
in the classroom, and to have him teach me more intensely
how to be a writer.
There are those who will say that writing is something that
cannot be taught, that there is no way to show someone how
to be a writer. I can only speak for myself, but Steven
Bauer taught me how to be a writer. He instilled in me a
seriousness about this craft, and he changed the way I see
the world.
It was never simply about writing something I thought was
clever or funny or sad… Steven read between the lines,
probed my mind, my subconscious, and asked me serious
questions about what mattered to me, about myself, about
the world. These were not questions I could answer readily.
Interpreting the world is something Steven values in
writing, and it became clear to me, through his words and
his careful readings of my work, that to do this, I needed
to take greater risks, in my writing and in my life.
A good teacher takes a subject and elevates it and makes
you think about how it matters in the grand scheme of
things. Because if it doesn’t, why put yourself through
this?
How lucky I was, years ago, to find my way into this man’s
classroom. How lucky I was to have a teacher who showed me
the way, and told me it was hard, told me it was dangerous
and told me it was worth it.
~~Rajiv Joseph is
a playwright whose works have been produced in New York,
Los Angeles, Houston, and Washington, D.C. and have been
translated into Romanian, French and Spanish. His
play Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo
(recently
on Broadway starring Robin Williams) won the National
Endowment for the Arts Award for Best New American Play
and was a finalist for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize. It has
now been nominated as Best Play for the 2011 Drama Desk
Awards, the Outer Critic Circle Awards, and the Drama
Desk Awards. Rajiv is also a 2009 winner of the
Whiting Writers Award.
Steven is that rare editor whose criticism almost feels
like praise, it's so dead-on. As a client, to feel like
somebody so completely *gets it* is not only helpful, it's
almost like receiving a gift.
~~Scott Hess is
Senior Vice President, Insights, TRU (a WPP Company). He
lives in Chicago and is the author of the blog
Tiny Poems.
Steven
has an extraordinary gift as a questioner and guide in
writing matters. He hears your writer's voice before you
can hear it yourself—both what you're reaching to say and
how you're needing to say it. He puts his finger on the gap
and asks why it's there. He lives words and knows how to
make them speak. And he's fearless, bringing to his work
with writers a vibrancy in opening out and telling the
truth, like breathing.
~~Paula Wenger teaches at the University of Colorado,
Boulder.
Let
me be blunt: working with Steven Bauer changed my life.
Before studying with him, I wanted to be a writer; after, I
was a writer.
His gifts as an editor are rare and invaluable. He guides
his authors with compassion and reason and a deep, abiding
belief in the power of language and imagination, and he
spends as much time engaging what’s working well on the
page as he does what isn’t yet meeting its potential. He
takes writers as seriously as they take themselves, and he
takes their work on its own terms, never trying to steer a
piece of poetry or prose in any direction other than its
most natural; he wants nothing more than to transform each
project into the ideal version of itself. His insights into
the writing craft are vast and unparalleled, and I’ve met
few editors who value the writer’s vision and voice more
than he does. I’m still learning from what he taught me,
still reaping the benefits of his inspired labor on my
behalf. I repeat his ideas in my workshops every week, and
I apply his methods and strategies to my fiction every day.
Time and again, you hear publishers say the days of
hands-on, visionary editors like Maxwell Perkins are long
gone. There aren’t enough hours in the day, they say.
Editors can no longer afford to invest such time and
passion into their writers.
And I always think, they haven’t met Steven
Bauer.
~~Bret Anthony Johnston is
the author of Corpus
Christi,
which won The Texas Institute of Letters Debut Fiction
Award and The Southern Review Short Fiction Award, among
many others. He also edited Naming
the World,
a collection of writing exercises. His new story
“Soldier of Fortune” has just won a Pushcart and will be
published in Best
American Short Stories 2011.
He directs the Creative Writing Program at Harvard
University.
Simply
put, Steven Bauer's work is world class. His fluencies in
the genres and forms of nonfiction writing, fiction
writing, and poetry converge in a distinct voice whose
style is not compromised by the expansive intellect driving
it. This kind of coherent and sophisticated vision makes
him an indispensable editor; he knows his voice and helps
others find theirs.
~~Hugh Sheehy's
short stories have appeared in The
Best American Mystery Stories 2008,
Glimmer
Train,
The
Kenyon Review,
The
Antioch Review,
The
New Orleans Review,
Southwest
Review and
other journals. His first collection of stories,
Variations
on a Theme has
just won the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction
and will be published in 2012 by the University of
Georgia Press. He teaches at Yeshiva University in New
York City.
I got
more editorial attention and guidance in 30 minutes of
working on a short story manuscript with Steven Bauer than
I got from a whole year of working on my first book with a
major publishing house. The reality of the current
landscape is that you have to show up polished and ready to
go to press. There’s no one better to help you get there
than Steven. The man is dedicated. He knows good writing,
and he knows how to pull it out of you. He was the best
teacher I ever had, and the crazy thing is, I’m not
special. You’ll hear it from many of his students: Steven
Bauer makes writers.
~~Austin Kleon is
the author
of Newspaper Blackout (Harper
Perennial) and Steal
Like an Artist (Workman
2012). He
is a
writer, cartoonist, and designer living in Austin,
Texas.
I can
say--without a doubt in my mind--that Steven Bauer has been
the single most influential teacher and writer in my life.
With his guidance, wisdom and friendship I managed not only
to realize a lifelong dream of publishing a book, but I
could actually look back at it and be proud of what I'd
written. And every time I do, I always see his influence
all over it--practically spilling out of the typeface.
There are editors who can help you craft better sentences,
and those are rare. Then there are editors who can
actually reach into your head through your prose and slice
through to what you're trying to describe about the world.
As far as these people go, I've only ever met Bauer.
~~Stephen Markley is
the author of Publish This Book (Sourcebooks)
which is currently being made into a movie. He is a
writer and blogger for
the RedEye in Chicago.
Few teachers have ever been as beneficial to my writing as
Steven Bauer. It goes without saying that he knows his way
around a sentence, a page, a story’s structure and sound.
But his greatest gift as a teacher, I’ve always thought, is
being able to read deeply--not only into the prose on a
page, but also into a writer’s reasons for writing it.
Many teachers can help you better your craft . . . but how
many can improve your vision?
~~Christopher Coake is
the author of We're
In Trouble,
for which he was granted The PEN/Robert Bingham Fellowship
for
a first work of fiction. His new, eagerly-awaited novel
will be published by Grand Central in 2012. He is an
Assistant Professor of English at the University of
Nevada/Reno.
Steven
Bauer recently edited my book, Called
To Serve: Stories of Men and Women Confronted by the
Vietnam War Draft. His
far-ranging expertise as an editor and writer was evident
throughout as he was able to distill the oral history
interviews I had gathered to their essence without losing
the voices of the subjects. Not only was he able to make
the testimonies of the men and women in the manuscript more
concise, but he also appreciated and affirmed the spirit of
the project, which enabled me to trust his judgment and
skill. In addition, he took the introductions to each
chapter as well as the researched chapters and succeeded in
making them more effective by revising and editing them for
clarity and flow. Steven possesses the qualities most
desirable in someone helping to shepherd such projects to
their conclusion - sensitivity, objectivity, and great
awareness of the powers of language to express a wide range
of ideas and emotions. Brilliant work!
~~Thomas Weiner is
Lead Teacher at the Smith College Campus School where he
has taught for the past thirty-five years. His
publications include articles about education,
Alzheimer's, and the Vietnam War draft.
Called
to Serve has
recently been published by Levellers Press.
Tom lives in Northampton, MA.
I am deeply grateful to Steven Bauer for his role in
encouraging and helping to improve my early writing. His
insightful questions helped me figure out my plot and
characters, and he always framed his criticisms in a way
that made me feel confident that I could make my work
better.
~~Margaret Peterson Haddix
is
the New York Times-bestselling author of more than 20
books for kids and young adults, including the
Shadow Children series and
The Missing series. Her most recent book is
The
Always War (2011).
Many
things set Steven Bauer apart: his experience, his
thoughtfulness, his
ability
to identify false notes. But most of all, Steven believes
that every
piece of writing is worth doing well, and to that end he's
refreshingly
candid and unbelievably thorough, an editor worthy of any
writer's money,
time, and faith.
~~Scott W. Berg is
the author of Grand
Avenues: The Story of Pierre Charles L'Enfant, the
French Visionary Who Designed Washington,
D.C. and
a popular history of the 1862 Dakota War that is
forthcoming from Pantheon in 2012. He teaches nonfiction
writing and literature in the George Mason University's
undergraduate and graduate creative writing programs.
I have always considered Steven the best editor I've worked
with. He has the rare and invaluable ability to see an
imperfect piece of writing from the point of view of the
author's intentions for it and, like an expert engineer, to
understand what is keeping it from standing on its own. He
is both exacting and compassionate in his approach to
working with writers and, as a true man of letters, is able
to work across many genres and styles of writing with equal
precision and insight. Over the years, I have found his
mentorship superlative in every way.
~~Dave Kajganich is
a screenwriter working in Los Angeles. His credits
include
"The Invasion" (2007) and "Town Creek" (2009). He is
currently
working with director David Fincher on an adaptation of the
French
graphic novel series "Le Tueur" ("The Killer") and adapting
Stephen King's "It" for Warner Brothers.
Steven
Bauer worked closely with one of my clients, and his work
was invaluable in making the manuscript really sing .
As a result, the book sold to a large publisher and
will be published in March 2010, complete with a book tour
and serious promotional backing by the
publisher. I would recommend him as someone who
is not only an excellent editor but as someone who knows
his way around the business.
~~Julie Hill is
a literary agent who has represented newbies and
celebrities, and is always looking for the next great
nonfiction bestseller. She attended the UC/Berkeley
Publishing Program, and did graduate work at UCLA as
well. The author of numerous short stories and
articles in print and online,
she can be contacted at hillagent@aol.com.
