Photography by Earl Wilson

Taffy Brodesser-Akner

Writer

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU SURPRISED YOURSELF IN YOUR WORK?

At the advice of two very good friends, the last pass I took on my new book was a cutting pass—a pass where you can’t do anything, not even fix a typo, except cut. I lost about 100 pages doing that. Prior to that, I would have said I was incapable of that.

WHO DO YOU CALL THE MOST?

My mother. She has four daughters, and it’s a little bit of a Hunger Games situation to get her on the phone sometimes, but she’s the person I want to speak with most.

“"Information actually doesn’t want to be free. It wants to be procured by people who are expert at doing that, and it wants to pay its procurers a healthy salary for the trouble."”

WHEN YOU WERE LITTLE, WHAT WERE YOU KNOWN FOR?

My tantrums.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SEE MORE OF IN YOUR INDUSTRY? LESS OF?

In journalism, I would love to see more people keeping their jobs. More than 500 journalists have lost their jobs across major publications just this year. It didn’t have to be this way, and it’s to no one’s benefit that it is, except for those private equity chumps. Information actually doesn’t want to be free. It wants to be procured by people who are expert at doing that, and it wants to pay its procurers a healthy salary for the trouble.

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