Make It Less Jewish. Jews Are Being Pushed Out And Meg Keene Has Had Enough!

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Welcome to Being Jewish, your home for deeply candid conversations on Jewish identity, culture, and current events

I'm your host, Jonah Platt, and today I'm gonna take you inside an industry that has been getting absolutely hammered by anti-Jew hostility

Sadly, there are many, and we're gonna be exploring several of them this season

But first up, we are focusing on the written word

Jews are the people of the book, but you wouldn't know it from the way the publishing industry has been rejecting, ignoring, attacking, and flat out sidelining Jewish authors and literary professionals since the anti-Jew cat was let out of the bag following October 7th

Here to take us inside the bigoted world of books is a woman who has experienced this ostracization firsthand, and responded not by giving up, but by launching her own Jewish fiction and literary nonfiction imprint as part of Wicked Sun with global distribution through Simon & Schuster

She's a Jew by choice, an eponymous tastemaker, and a lifelong liberal who says her politics now are simply the Jewish people

She's the new executive editor of Meg Keen Books

Please welcome Ms

Meg Keen

Nice to be here

Great to have you

Meg, pardon my French, but what the fuck is going on over there? What the fuck is going on over there? Fill my audience in on what the hostility and, and the environment has been in the publishing world for these past couple years

So it's, it's been really terrible, and there has been a little bit of a, you know, the Jew turning their pockets out to try to prove it

Agents have been talking about it

Uh- Authors have been talking about it, and publishing is really an industry, I think like a lot of, you know, entertainment industries, that thrives in a culture of silence, um, in that you're not supposed to, you're not supposed to talk about things

If you talk about things, then suddenly, you know, people stop calling, you don't have an agent, whatever

Mm

What's been happening is that people have- Jews have been im- struggling to get agents in the first place, Jewish writers

Um, they will bring books to their agents, and their agents will say, "Well, it's just really not the time for a Jewish story," right? Like, it's just really not the time

Nobody wants to read about Golda Meir, right? Like, we're not even talking about, like, antisemitism in the moment, right? Like, nobody wants to read about apparently anything

And when you say that's, like the agents are saying that, where's that coming from? Is that a top-down? Is that a publishing down? Is that an, an individual agent? It really is coming from the fact that agents only have a job in so much as they can sell your work, right? Sure

They… And they don't make a salary

They make 15% on what they can sell

So agents are a little bit stuck in that if there's no editor to sell the work to, how are they gonna sign you as a client, right? And editors are, I think there's a mix of editors themselves not wanting these books, and editors knowing that w- if they take one of these books, first of all, they have to take it to their editorial board, and their editorial board is, you know, gonna be somewhat hostile

And then there's also been this sort of this wider, uh, cultural problem within publishing, in that publishing increasingly relies on influencers, right? And that they now have, like, influencer teams often, right, with the, that work with an imprint

Um, and we know that influencers have been incredibly hostile

And so- I know sort of on deep background, because nobody can say anything because either they will lose their job or they already lost their job and they're lawyered up, in some cases influencer teams are going to publishers and saying, "You know, you signed this Zionist baby killer, and so not only are we not gonna promote their book, but we're gonna threaten to not… to, like, back out entirely and not promote any of your books," right? And beyond that, there's a chilling effect of these big, big boycotts that started happening right after October 7th, um, where a spreadsheet was put together- Right … right, called Is Your Favorite Author a Zionist? Lists of Gr- Jews that are color-coded, like red, yellow, and green are, are, like, very alarming

What was the color coding? Well, you know, red was Zionist, and yellow was maybe

Oh my God

And green was they've said, "Free Palestine," right? Um, and then it would h- it had a list of crimes

And Sarah J

Maas is, who wrote… For those who don't know, she's written… She's, like, the most successful romantasy author, perhaps, like, the most success- one of the most successful authors period right now, um, and Jewish

And her crime was that she went to the Kotel on Birthright, so, like, a million years ago, and she put she said that she put two prayers in the wall, one for peace and one that she get published

And, you know, she sold 10 million copies of her books, so I feel like one one is a win, right? Yeah

She really won one, and she really lost the other

Yeah

So, um, so then there was a boycott organized against Sarah J

Maas, wisher of peace at the Kotel

And, um, that technically still hasn't been called off, but that was a, it was a huge, huge deal

It was a boycott of St

Martin's Press

Influencers wouldn't review their stuff

They would review bomb books by authors that were, like, v- very free Palestine

They would still, like, one-star review them and, and say, like, "St

Martin's Press boycott

" Just because St

Martin's Press was publishing Sarah Maas's- It was because they had one Jewish staffer in, like, marketing or something with family in Israel who after October 7th reposted, like, the exact same things all of us reposted- Right right, like, "Praying for my family in Israel

" So that was the boycott

St

Martin's Press wouldn't fire her, right? And my husband's an attorney who does employee, employment law, and my husband was like, "Yeah, 'cause you can't just fire an employee

" For like Because, uh, anti-Zionists on the internet say you have to

Exactly

Yeah

That's really not how it works

Um, but that sort of thing has a, a chilling effect, right? Yeah

Because at the end of the day, people are in business, and you ha- if you're picking between, like, two authors, they both have, I don't know, romance books

They both have thrillers, whatever, and one of them is a public Zionist, and if y- and the, the book is, let's pretend the word Jewish doesn't even- Right isn't even mentioned

One comes with smoke, one doesn't

Exactly

So at the end of the day, what are you gonna pick? Right

Right? And so when I started speaking out, I felt like at the very least, they're getting away with this because the other side is so loud, right? Yeah

And until we started speaking out, nobody was talking about the fact that this was going on

And I felt like we may not be able to solve it, but at the very least, we need to try to be loud as well so there's pressure coming from both sides

Yeah

And so speaking of that, uh, you were quoted in this sort of landmark piece that PEN America put out- Right … called The Silent Moratorium

They interviewed 30 different writers and professionals, uh, about the isolation and exclusion of Jews from the, the publishing world

Anybody can read this article online

It's shocking

I mean, it's just story after story after story

Mm-hmm

So let, let's go to your personal story with your book- Right … and, and the pushback that you got

Yeah

So I- it's funny, 'cause I still feel strange telling this story because it, it involves an agent who is very Jewish and is very lovely and was doing the right thing and giving me good advice

Um, but I had written this book that was essentially, like, upmarket romance, um, for the for those of you not in the industry, that mean- upmarket means, like, the prose is good

Hmm

Nothing against downmarket

Um, but so I'd written this upmarket romance, and it got a huge amount of agent attention right away

Um, normally- You know, you can go five years querying, you know, an agent with three different books

And within six weeks, I had four offering agents, I had 20 man- full man- you know, like things were cooking

Yeah

Right? There are those moments where you're like, "Well, we're onto something

" Um, and this agent is Jewish, very Jewish, uh, and she had a really candid conversation with me where she said, "I've read it, I loved it

I had to sit with it because I also know that I might not be able to sell it, and I think the only chance we have to sell it is if we strip everything out of it that's Jewish that isn't driving the plot

" I started writing this book just like a month after October 7th

Once I, I th- I think all of us went into that freeze where it was like we could- we're just like- Right barely functioning, right? And then you get to the point where you're like, "I have to do something

" Um, and for whatever reason, my response was like, "I'm gonna try writing something that's like for Jewish women," right? That's like, "We need something that's good right now

" Yeah

Um, and it was just a very Jewish book

Like, they, you know, called each other like Heim Shelley, and like there were moments where one or the other of them was in Israel, and they talked about their family's Holocaust history because I realized that that's something all Jews do really early on in a relationship, and I'd never read it

Yeah

So she was like, "We have to strip everything out

Like, we have to strip out all the spoken Hebrew

" And then she said, like we're- the best friend was named Yael, and she said, "This breaks my heart because Yael is one of my favorite names

" And I named the character Yael because it was, I tend to name my characters names I wanted to name my kids, but you know, were like the almost

That just didn't work out

Right

Exactly

Yeah

And Yael was in my like almost pile, so obviously it's one of my favorite names, and she was- said, "It's one of my favorite names, but we have to take it out

We would have to take it out because it, that alone will trigger editors," right? Wow

And it's, it's been uncomfortable because sometimes the s- that story has been interpreted as the agent was being antisemitic

Right

And the agent was absolutely not being antisemitic, right? Right

Was a Jew who cared about Jews, but she was doing the thing that we do for each other which is to be like, "Hey-" If you wanna get this sold, we're gonna have to do this

Right

Yeah

Like, we have to watch out, right? Wow

Um, and the reason Penn reached out to me was I had spoken out about it already, and it was just so It's so rare to have something where it's spoken as opposed to it's all behind the scenes, it's all coded, right? Like, editors passed on my manuscript with very, like, things that, like, could, could be fine but felt weird

You know, like, "I just can't emotionally relate to these characters

" Hmm

Which, which, you know, could be fine, except it was a super emotional book, right? Uh, every Jewish woman who read it was like, "I was crying," and whatever, right? And I was like, "You know, I just don't think we would say to another minority, like, 'For some reason I just could not relate to these characters because they were Mexican

'" Right

Or like, you know, because we were Mexican, like, but like we know not to say that

Um, but that stuff is all, like, it could be this, it could be that

Um, and PEN interviewed me because this one story, this agent actually said the thing out loud to me, bless her, um, and it gave, like, an actual data point in that she knew what was happening, and she warned me

Yeah

Damn

And the book didn't sell

I d- I signed with a different agent, which I probably shouldn't have

Like, the book didn't sell, but looking back, it's also one of those things where I'm like, "You know, maybe it will have another life in the future," but I don't… Like, maybe it was the right thing

Like, I would have had to strip the b- book's, like, soul out to sell, and there, like, at what point does it s- it stop being worth it? Well, this is a good segue to talking about Meg Keen Books

Mm-hmm

Can't you put it out yourself? I mean, I mean, I could, but isn't it a little like I'm looking for the next great Jewish author and it is me in a mustache? Well, you know

Right

I mean- You need, we need good stuff … I mean, may- So- I mean, maybe

Tell, tell me about Meg Keen Books

So tell me, like, what's the mandate? Where did it come from, and, and how's it going so far? I mean, it is amazing

Uh, so the first time I Spoke out about this

It was on a podcast with Canadian Jewish News, and my thought was like, "Oh, I'm just tip- dipping my toe in the water

Like, I'm not even Canadian

This is so tiny," right? Forgetting that the internet is the internet

Uh, so it went super viral, I mean, to the point that, like, cousins of mine who are not online very much at all were texting me like, "I saw your interview on Canadian Jewish News," right? Cool

Adam and David from Wicked Son emailed me, were basically like, "Oh, we just wanna, like… You probably have good stories that you didn't share to, with the press

Like, do you wanna talk?" And I was like, "Okay, we're gonna have a gossip session

" Got on the phone with them

Adam led w- Adam led with, "I've been at the University of Meagan for four days

I've read everything you've ever written

" I've been on the internet, like, writing on the internet publicly, very publicly, since 2008, so I was like, "Oh, that's a lot of stuff

" Yeah

"And that seems like a, maybe a tiny bit of overprep- like, prep for us to gossip, but okay

" Uh, and by the end of the call, it turns out they were feeling me out, and they, by the end of the call, they offered me an imprint, and I had been talking to friends for w- at least a year about how this is what needed to happen

There needed to be a Jewish imprint, and they basically, out of the blue, offered, like Hashem's timing, right? Wow

Like, offered… It was just like it floated down from the sky

Before they finished the sentence, I was like, "Yes, yes, yes, I want this

" Um, so I sort of… They ha- And they have given me just an a- amazing amount of la- latitude

Um, so I've sort of shaped the mandate in that I think it's really important to show the breadth of Jewish quality that's being left on the table, right? I can't publish everything

Um, right now we're underfunded

Like, we're gonna have to raise money

Mm-hmm

You know, like, and I think that's a broader conversation the Jewish community needs to have in that, like, we are going to have to start funding arts infrastructure, right? Yeah

'Cause it doesn't get done for free, and if we only save, like, our bodies but we don't save our culture, like, have we done anything? Yeah

Right? So that's gonna… Like, God knows the Jewish community is not lacking in funds

We just have to decide that we care

Yeah, this is something I- I've posted about on, on my social media, and we'll probably be talking about more on this show

Um- 25% of Jewish households gave philanthropically to arts and culture

Of those households, of that money, 1% went to Jewish arts and culture

Yep

So we are giving almost nothing as Jews- Yep … to Jewish arts and culture

And we have to change that

Yeah

Right? And increasingly, there are organizations that… I mean, we are one, but there are many others

They're starting to be in film and TV as well- Mm-hmm … right, that are, that are work- Like, we're just going to have to rebuild this

Yeah

Like Simon & Schuster used to be a Jewish press, and now they're publishing people that call Jews rats, you know? Like, so I- it's not ours anymore, so we're gonna have- Yeah to build a new one

Um, but anyway, so I can't do everything, but my mandate As I define my mandate, is to, I have four to six books this year, and I really wanna publish across genre, right? I wanna show that sure, we can do literary fiction, but, like, we're also missing Jewish talent in horror or thriller or romance or, right? Like, I really wanna show that breadth

If nothing else, I mean, one, it will produce great books that we'll all wanna read, um, but if nothing else, it will embarrass publishing, right? Mm

Because they are getting away with saying, like, "Well, it's just they're, none of it's good

" Right

Like, Jews, Jews who have contributed more to literature than, like, any other single group, suddenly none of them can write

Right

And so we just can't publish them

Is, is the aim Jewish authors or Jewish stories, or both? It's both

I mean, I… As we grow, I'm certainly interested in publishing Jewish authors who are not writing Jewish books

Right now, I'm really interested in books where being Jewish, and I don't mean religiously or in any one way, right, but being Jewish is in some way, like, foundational- Mm-hmm load-bearing to the book itself, because I think there's fewer and fewer of those books

Even before all this happened, like, publishing was getting, like, more and more antisemitic bes- behind the scenes

And, like, people- So this predates October 7th

Yeah

Yeah, it does

And if you go back and read Cavalier and Clay, like, there is not a- Which I just did recently

Oh, my God

I just reread it- Right … like a month ago

What, me too

It's, it's, I think it's my favorite book

I know

I reread it and was like, "It's in my top 10

" Yeah

And then I finished it and I was like, "Top five, top one

" I mean, it really is- Right? … spectacular

It's spectacular

And there is not a sentence of that book that is not Jewish

Yeah, it's so Jewish

It is so Jewish

Yeah

And now we're getting books where it's like, "Rachel lights a menorah," and then the rest of the book is just an, you know, any- Right … right? And there ha- there certainly have been, um, Odessa just came out

This- I was gonna bring them up

Oh, I, I'm actually not talk, talking about the publishing company- Okay confusingly, but we can come back to that

Odessa by Gabriel Scherr is a book that just came out

Okay

Um, and it is Jewish horror, and everyone should read it

Oh, that's cool

I just finished it literally in my hotel room last night

But it's, it starts with a violent pogrom, right, in a shtetl, and then has a dybbuk and a golem and a, right? Um, and every part of it is Jewish, and I don't know how it got published, but, like, bless, it did

And I want those books, right? Yeah

Right? Like, we need more of those books, so

So to, so you keep- The other Odessa … setting up all my segues

Um, so there's, you know, you have Meg Keen Books

Another one that just popped up, uh, under Highline Publishing, uh, from Neil Blair- Yep Jewish literary agent, is Odessa Editions

Odessa Editions

So maybe if, um, if you can't publish a Meg Keen book, maybe Odessa can publish a Meg Keen book

I know, maybe

I mean, it's good to see that- more Jews are recognizing that we gotta build our own stuff I'll also shout out Canary, um, Publishing, which Howard Levy is setting up, and he is just the loveliest person alive

Um, the bottom… I mean, what I am finding that is al- alarming actually, you know, is, is I was making this sort of theoretical case that people kept making me prove and prove again and prove with data that, that Jews were getting shut out

But my inbox now tells the story in that, like, I am a tiny, right? Like, I'm a tiny, like, imprint of an imprint, startup, whatever, and I am getting these incredible books that should have gone to Big Five in, like, a six-way auction, right? Right

Should not be in my inbox

And I, you know, I have four to six books a year, and right now I'm like, "I don't even know…" For me to try to get the books that, like, should have been published because they're by superstars out- Right like, and, and we meanwhile have to be growing, like, our next generation of talent

So people have asked questions like, "Is three presses too many?" And I'm like, "Like, 18 presses," you know what I mean? Like- Yeah … is three presses too many? Like, no, no, no, no, no

No

Like, the scope of our pro- problem is so far beyond that

To your knowledge, is there any legal action happening or any sort of coalescing f- from the Jews in this industry around taking a stand in this way, in this issue? Um, we're already fighting this fight of, like, Jews complain about everything

Jews make up antisemitism when it's not there

Jews always centering themselves, right? Mm-hmm

And so I think this is, this is the debate w- in every industry, right? Is that, are we better? We have a lim- I have a friend who r- runs a very successful business, and she used to tell me, you know, when I ran my own business, that people are always gonna… If you're successful, people are always gonna copy you, right? Mm-hmm

And she had a physical product, so she would get, like, physical copies, copycats

And she was like, "You have a limited amount of time and energy

You can either spend it going after copycats, or you can spend it building your own thing," right? And she was like, "Copycats you need to sort of be sad for, because if the best they can do is copy you," right? You're the person who has new ideas and can keep moving forward, so you're better off putting your time and energy there

So you know, there's, there, the Lawfare Project

There's people who, the ADL, right? There's people whose jobs it is to do that, and it will be interesting to see what they do

I mean, I was a research partner with the ADL over the summer

The ADL is having, uh, a, there's gonna be a landmark report coming out this fall about antisemitism in the arts

Right

So, which is, you know, long overdue and super important

It's just like, where do you put your energy? And is suing people going to get us the result that we want? And I just don't know the answer

Mm

But is there… And is there grounds to sue? It's just, it's very hard to prove

It's a tough sticky wicket

Sticky wicket

Anything else you think that we should know that we haven't covered? So I think so much of our lives right now feels like we're fighting or we're embattled, or our kids are coming home being called a duty- dirty Jew at school, which happened in our life

Um, or come home being told that their cousins are genocidal Zionists, which happened in our life, right? Uh, like there, there's all of these things, sort of battles on every front

Um- And one of the things that we can actually do is, to use my specific example, but please broaden this, right, we can pick up Jewish books and read them

Like, fun books, not just books about, like, how bad everything is

Right

Right? Like, we can pick up novels

We can go see Jewish movies

We can go see Jewish comedians

That actually matters

Like, buying a Jewish book right now actually matters

Going to a Jewish movie right now actually mat- like, in a really significant way

Yes

Because all of these industries, publishing, you know, film and TV, whatever it is, their story is… Someone actually asked me, uh, well, I just… Sorry, I can't get through it

Uh, I just don't see how selling books to Jews is like a, is like a business model

And I was like, "Who do you think buys books?" Right? Wow

Like, we are the ones buying the books in the first place

Uh, so it is our job to prove, right, that same problem that we have where it's like we give all this money, but 1% of it to ourselves, right? Mm-hmm

We buy all these books

We have to buy our own books

Like, I don't even care at this point if you take the book and you use it as a doorstop

Yeah

Like, buy seven of them and, and use them as a doorstop

Yeah

I think you should read them, but, like, I don't even care, right? We have to, we have to m- prove the point, and we get to do it doing something, like, really enjoyable

I finish a Jewish novel, and I, like, my soul feels refreshed

Yeah

I think that's so important, and as you said, not, it's not just books, it's across the board

When there are Jewish- Across the board … TV shows, movies- Yeah … anything

Go see Zoe Buckman's shows if you're in wherever they are, Miami usually, because they're canceled in London

Shout out to Zoe

We've had her on the show

Um, yeah, it's the, those… We need to send a message with our dollars- Right … that these are, uh, worthwhile properties in the marketplace, and that they have- Yes an audience, and that they- Yes … deserve to be supported

And we know- It's not just out of the goodness of our hearts

We need to send this message

We know how to do this

Yeah

Right? Like, we know how to do this, and, like, not every part of Jewish life has to be, like, educational and, like, eating our vegetables, right? It can be, like, sexy visual art and, like, you know, funny movies and, you know, riveting books, right? So let ourselves have that, and then you get to be like, "And I did good

" Yeah

Right? So, you know, pick, pick one thing a month, one thing a week

One thing

I'm gonna go to this Jewish art exhibit

I'm gonna buy this Jewish book

I'm gonna watch this Jewish show, whatever it is

Right

Watching Fauda is now your civic duty

There you go

Fantastic

Meg, thank you so much for being here

Uh, I really appreciate you enlightening us on all of this

Best of luck with, with the new imprint

Thank you

We can't wait to see what comes out of it

Folks out there, we need your support, and that ain't fiction

I will see you all right back here for the very next erudite episode of Being Jewish with me, Jonah Platt