Did you know that Salt and Sage Books has a podcast? Well, now you do! We launched Rough Drafts Welcome on October 11, 2023 with the goal of discussing sensitivity reading, editing, and all things writing.
Now, we know that you probably already have a hundred podcasts that you listen to regularly–we know that we do! We have so many excellent podcasts about the lived experience of people across the world, and so many more excellent podcasts about writing.
What we found was missing is our own particular niche–a podcast that discusses representation AND writing. Plus, we’ll be honest, we just really like talking to each other.
What is this podcast about?
We started it with a twofold intention: first, we want you to get to know our editors better! So much of writing is finding people who you feel really safe with, and what better way to do that than to spend time in conversation with them.
Our second goal is to be part of the ongoing discussion around representation in fiction. We recognize that we’re only one voice in a sea of many, and we would strongly encourage you to seek out other podcasts on top of ours. We don’t claim to be the ultimate resource for anything, but we do have a pretty remarkable group of people here at Salt and Sage Books, and we know what we’re doing.
Our Approach
We called the podcast Rough Drafts Welcome very intentionally: we don’t do much (if any) editing to the podcast in post-production, because we think it’s important for us to own that so many of the realizations that we have are a product of us moving from one point of thought to another. That whole process feels incredibly important to us, not only when it comes to concerns around representation, but it also really represents the way that authors work with their drafts. At a certain point, you’ve got to get through the first draft before you can do any real editing.
(If you’re one of those magical people who writes perfect first drafts, please send your magical unicorn energy our way!)
We post every Wednesday. We intend to take a break from producing the podcast over the summer so that we can focus on our company events again (you can follow us on EventBrite to get notified for those – they’re incredibly cool) and then start back up again in the fall.
While we haven’t talked specifically about any present-day events, we aren’t ruling that out. Because of the pre-recorded nature of the podcast, it can be difficult to respond to events as they’re happening, but please rest assured that we are keenly tuned in to the ongoing struggles of marginalized communities around the world. We might talk about some of those in the future, but we always want to center the experiences of the people who are directly impacted by those events, and sometimes it’s difficult to find someone who is available to discuss it while those events are happening.
Your Feedback
Even though we really love chatting with each other, the whole point of a podcast is to reach out to a broader audience. We really want to know what you think, what questions come up for you, and how the podcast is impacting you. The best way to give us that feedback is by commenting directly on the podcast episode on Spotify or on the corresponding blog posts. We also read our comments on social media!
We can’t wait to have you join us. You can subscribe to our podcast anywhere podcasts exist, or you can watch us be awkward on-camera on YouTube.
Thank you all for your support!
