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From 91Ώμ»ξΑΦ to storytelling: Alum excels in editorial career

October 9, 2023

Writer, editor, and blogger Debby Mayer ’68 has published stories of all kinds throughout her career, including novels, short stories, essays, and a memoir.
  

Mayer, who grew up in Schenectady, N.Y., and majored in French at 91Ώμ»ξΑΦ, always knew that a writing career would require day jobs. During her senior year of college, she took shorthand and a workshop with Harry Barba, who taught creative writing at 91Ώμ»ξΑΦ. He encouraged her to submit a short story for publication. The story was published by a teen magazine, which then hired her as an editorial assistant.

Mayer continued to write, earned a master’s degree in creative writing from The City College of New York, and was the first employee hired, in 1971, by Poets & Writers, today one of the largest nonprofit literary organizations in the United States. She would eventually become publications director there. Mayer also served as editorial director in the publications office at Bard College until she retired in 2010.

Mayer’s first novel, β€œSisters” (Putnam’s, 1982), is about a working artist who becomes the single mother of her 8-year-old half-sister. Her memoir, β€œRiptides & Solaces Unforeseen” (Epigraph Publishing, 2013), is about her life partner’s battle with brain cancer. Mayer is also author of β€œLiterary Agents: The Essential Guide for Writers” (Penguin, 1998). Her short stories and essays have appeared in The New Yorker and Redbook, among many other magazines and anthologies.

Her latest project is a weekly blog, β€œ,” on the online platform Substack. The posts are short conversations and musings about everyday life with her 16-year-old dog, Sizzle. The basenji with attitude was 9 when Mayer adopted her, and the two eventually made the cross-country trek to San Diego, where Mayer has lived since 2019.

β€œSizzle is witty, yes, but not cute β€” I promise,” Mayer quips.

At the end of the day, Mayer will tell you she is a storyteller β€” in the truest sense, as it is with any artist. β€œYou go to the computer, the easel, the piano, the notebook. You start to pick out a tune, a line, a sentence,” she says. β€œThe story begins.”