Zakiya Dalila Harris on her new book ‘The Other Black Girl’

Harris started at Knopf Doubleday as an Editorial Assistant, a position she held for about two years before being promoted in 2018 to Associate Editor. She thought it was a career she wanted, but when she was given her first book to edit she said it was like being proposed by someone she didn’t want to marry. She went to a colleague’s office and cried.

“I remember sobbing to her and saying, ‘I should be really happy, but I’m not,’ she said.

Three months after the encounter with the toilet that triggered the book, Harris quit her job to focus on her writing, staying afloat with a part-time job. Six months of sleep deprivation later, she had a completed manuscript.

Her boyfriend, now engaged, Grisha Rudensky, had just moved into her studio in Midwood, Brooklyn, so she had someone she could share the rent and groceries with, which allowed her to quit her job. affordable editing. Harris said much of her life had been “transmuted to Nella” and that Nella’s white boyfriend, Owen, was somewhat inspired by Rudensky.

Rudensky served as a sounding board, speaking to him through details like the right name for someone from Portland, Oregon (River), and a book a self-involved white man would love (“Infinite Jest”). Despite his involvement, he did not get his hands on the manuscript until it was edited by Harris’ editor.

“She’s a perfectionist,” he says. “She didn’t let me read the book for a very long time, even though I knew every part of the story.

In some ways, this book could have fit into any white-dominated profession, Harris said. But the book she wrote is a sharp criticism of publishing – which hasn’t stopped the industry from wanting to buy it. Wrong.

“It was really unlike anything I had experienced,” said Stephanie Delman, an agent at Sanford J. Greenburger Associates who represents Harris.