Drafting the Past is Back, Baby
A new interview with Ruby Lal, why you need a website, and a writing opportunity!
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After a slightly longer than planned (and unannounced, oops) summer hiatus, Drafting the Past is back with new episodes, starting with last week's great conversation with Dr. Ruby Lal.
I devoured Ruby's work while I was preparing for this episode, so it was a pleasure to hear her go into detail about how she brings the world she's writing about to life in such vivid detail. Listen to our conversation here.
I'm pleased to report that I have a whole batch of new episodes ready to go, and more scheduled to record in the coming weeks. You might even occasionally see episodes every week, instead of every other week! I hope you're in the market for lots more talk about writing history, because I'm here to deliver.
Writers, You DO Have Your Own Website, Right?
Yesterday, I took to Bluesky to encourage historians who write books (and anyone who writes, really) to seriously consider setting up their own author website (separate from your academic institution or other work profile!) and getting some professional headshots taken.
Someone very reasonably asked if I could explain why this matters, and I thought I'd share some reasons here, too:
- It helps you look a little more professional, and identifies you as a writer, not just an academic.
- When people (say, podcasters) are searching for information about you and your writing, it helps to find it all in one simple place, one that we know you are in charge of keeping up-to-date. I never know how frequently a university profile bio or photograph is updated, and sometimes I'm not even sure which university profile that comes up in a search is current! Help the people helping you by making that info easy to find. It's especially good if you have a high-res version of your preferred author photo to download there.
- You can update it whenever you want, not whenever your department gets around to updating its website. You'd be amazed how many department profiles don't have an author's most recent book(s) even listed on them.
- If/when you leave your institution, it won't result in a lot of broken links to your nonexistent faculty page. Odds are, your personal URL will be around much longer than any institutional affiliation.
- It will help you come up earlier in search results, especially if your faculty page links to your site and vice versa.
- You get to control your online identity. This is a bit more of a philosophical reason, but I think it's always best to have an online presence that belongs to you—not just your university or a social media platform that might get bought by a megalomaniac and/or overwhelmed by AI slop.
I know that creating your own site can be daunting, but there are lots of relatively easy solutions online. I may write more on this in the future, but publishing guru Jane Friedman has a very thorough guide to help you get started (shout out to Jeff Manuel for sharing this in the thread!).
Let me know if you want to hear more on this subject!
A Writing Opportunity!
One last thing before you go: My pals at Contingent Magazine have a call out right now for essays "that offer historical perspectives on monsters in any geographic or temporal context." You can read the whole call here for details. Pitches are due by Monday, October 20.
Contingent prioritizes writing from "people who have completed postgraduate work in history and are working outside the tenure-track professoriate, including (but not limited to) contingent faculty, K-12 teachers, graduate students, and public historians." AND THEY PAY! ($300/essay, in this case.) I've written for Contingent several times, and it's always been a delight.
Are you interested in continuing to hear about writing opportunities in this email? Hit reply to let me know.