Meg Waite Clayton

New York Times Bestselling Author

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Award Winner took a Decade to Find a Publisher

Journal Avatar to Link Back to Blog HopThe 2014 Bailey Prize winner (formerly the Orange Prize) for Women is Eimear McBride, for her debut novel A Girl Is A Half-Formed Thing. And here’s the thing: it took her six months to write (I know, I know), and TEN YEARS to find a publisher. She was rejected by every publisher she sent it to, and finally found a home for it with a small press which had only published one prior book.
Imagine if she had given up, or dismissed small presses.
It reminds me of Tatjana Soli’s path to winning the James Tait Black award for The Lotus Eaters, also a debut that had a ten-year history about which she wrote so eloquently here in “Silencing the Voices of No.”
Just in case you’re thinking of taking rejection as a sign that you don’t have what it takes…
Meg

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Meg Waite Clayton

Meg Waite Clayton is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of THE LAST TRAIN TO LONDON, a Jewish Book Award finalist based on the true story of the Kindertransport rescue of ten thousand children from Nazi-occupied Europe—and one brave woman who helped them escape. Her six prior novels include the Langum-Prize honored The Race for Paris and The Wednesday Sisters, one of Entertainment Weekly's 25 Essential Best Friend Novels of all time. A graduate of the University of Michigan and its law school, she has also written for the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, Forbes, Runners World, and public radio, often on the subject of the particular challenges women face. megwaiteclayton.com