Dan Piepenbring
Paris Review web editor
Discussion
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Dan Piepenbring
@danpiepenbring · Web editor, The Paris Review
Hi, I'm Dan Piepenbring, a writer and the web editor of The Paris Review, a literary quarterly based in New York. I've been there since 2014. I've also worked at Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Bon Appetit; Scott Rudin Productions; and the Institute for the Future of the Book. I'm the drummer in Vulture Shit, a punk band. I've never broken a bone. I'm happy to discuss books, magazines, writing online, music, my future, your future, the future of the nation, and soup.
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Emily Hodgins
@ems_hodge · Community and Marketing, Product Hunt
What is your favourite flavour soup? 😜🍵 (Personally I'm a big fan of cream of tomato 🍅or pea & ham)
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Dan Piepenbring
@danpiepenbring · Web editor, The Paris Review
@ems_hodge I love a good Italian Wedding soup, actually. The meatballs. The meatballs!
Erik Torenberg
@eriktorenberg · Former Product Hunt
How do you see the future of publishing evolving?
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Dan Piepenbring
@danpiepenbring · Web editor, The Paris Review
@eriktorenberg Edible books.
Mark Krotov
@markkrotov · senior editor, Melville House
What new or recent novels are you looking forward to reading? Which ones have you really loved?
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Dan Piepenbring
@danpiepenbring · Web editor, The Paris Review
@markkrotov Looking forward to Mark Leyner's GONE WITH THE MIND and Rivka Galchen's LITTLE LABORS. Really enjoyed Alexandra Kleeman's YOU TOO CAN HAVE A BODY LIKE MINE and Mark Beyer's AGONY, which the NYRB's new comics imprint just reissued.
Mark Krotov
@markkrotov · senior editor, Melville House
@danpiepenbring I just heard about AGONY yesterday! I need to read it.
QueenLear
@queenleariv · ConnectionAgent-Co-Founder @ButtonPoetry
Hey Dan thanks for taking time to chat with the community! I am curious about your experience of writing online. Do you have some favorite tools and platforms that you like to use? Is there a need that doesn't exist, such as collaborative writing tools, catered message apps, ebook assistance... etc?
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Dan Piepenbring
@danpiepenbring · Web editor, The Paris Review
@queenleariv I remain an admirer, mostly from afar, of the fax machine.
QueenLear
@queenleariv · ConnectionAgent-Co-Founder @ButtonPoetry
@danpiepenbring PC Load Letter... wtf does that mean? ...printer+fax combos are fancy.
Erik Torenberg
@eriktorenberg · Former Product Hunt
Hey Dan! Huge Paris Review Fan.
What do you think is the recipe for a great interview? What are your favorite interview questions?
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Dan Piepenbring
@danpiepenbring · Web editor, The Paris Review
@eriktorenberg The Review's interviews tend to minimize the presence of the interviewer, which I think works well. They're also deeply collaborative: the subject and the interviewer spend a lot of hours together, and they both have a hand in revising the transcript. I think it keeps all the benefits of the conversational form—the sense of someone being drawn out or guided by an interlocutor—but it does away with the chattiness that inhibits a lot of Q&As. I'm amazed by what some mags leave in; it's almost as if they'd transcribe the literal throat-clearing if they could.
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Dan Piepenbring
@danpiepenbring · Web editor, The Paris Review
@macseries I wish I had one to plug. It'll be sometime in April but we're still sorting out the details.
Mark Krotov
@markkrotov · senior editor, Melville House
How do you think the Paris Review Daily has evolved since it started? Do you think it's playing a different role online than it initially did?
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Dan Piepenbring
@danpiepenbring · Web editor, The Paris Review
@markkrotov The Daily launched in 2010, and there were many fewer websites devoted to literary culture then. It was kind of a novelty to have a quarterly literary magazine with a daily culture blog as a sideline. I think that—plus the work of the three great editors who preceded me, Thessaly, Deirdre, and Sadie—got the Daily a large audience early on. You could go there to find good writers working in a shorter form and clearly enjoying themselves. But that was back when people would sometimes still speak of "content" in scare quotes. The internet didn't feel—to me, anyway—like a hub for nonfiction and personal essays. There was a sense that people were opposed to reading longer work on their phones or computers. Today, there are a lot more writers working online, and the writing is only getting better, I think, but there's so much of it. The struggle is to publish stuff that doesn't feel interchangeable, as if it could be on any website. We had our best year ever in 2015, and we're publishing more pieces than ever, but it's hard to know what role we're taking in the broader conversation ... I don't know, this answer feels deeply preliminary to me, but I'm pushing submit so I can go back to making soup jokes.
Mark Krotov
@markkrotov · senior editor, Melville House
@danpiepenbring Thank you for this great answer, and for soup jokes past and future.
Emily Hodgins
@ems_hodge · Community and Marketing, Product Hunt
Hi Dan, what is some of the best advice you've ever been given? Flip side, what's the worst?
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Dan Piepenbring
@danpiepenbring · Web editor, The Paris Review
@ems_hodge My first week in New York, I went to see a Japanese punk band in Greenpoint. They were touring with next to nothing and hardly seemed to know any songs, but there they were. My best friend and I told the frontman we wanted to start a band. "Just book the show," he said. "Book the show first. Then you're forced to do everything else." This has proven true.
Jacqueline von Tesmar
@jacqvon · Community, Product Hunt ✌️😻
What do you want your tombstone to say? 💀