writers caucus, 25, 30 members of congress, both sides of the aisle just enjoy writing and we do workshops, have offers to talk about the process, creative rituals and it is a wonderfully refreshing group of members. the 19 booktv wants to know what you are reading this summer, tweet us your answer at booktv, or you can post it on our facebook page, facebook.com/booktv. now joining us on booktv is chris jackson. what do you do for a living? >> guest: i am publisher, editor in chief of oneworld books. it existed 20 years ago, and reimagining, reanimating for today. >> host: what is the focus of one word? >> guest: across my career,

focus on social justice issues, there is fiction and nonfiction, helping us understand the past in different ways, narrative trails, and understand our history, victims and crises better to storytelling and help us imagine new futures so it is a book about the central conversations we are having today and new ways of thinking about them. from perspectives outside what we consider to be the mainstream. whether that is people coming from racial background, national background, people who have political ideas outside the mainstream, i use the term mainstream loosely, i really mean people outside the mainstream discourse, probably in the center of american life.

>> host: what are some of the books you have published? >> guest: between the world and me, it came out last year, won the national book award, a big bestseller. it is a great example of the kind of writer i want to work with going forward because someone who had a big idea in that book, to talk about the idea of race, the idea of the body, a lot of contemporary scholarship around those issues, about the rules, the body in political conversation. but did it in a way that dramatizes it, humanizes it, and

helps reinvigorate conversations, give it a new perspective. brought a new power to it. did a book with brian stevenson, a death penalty lawyer, my personal hero in montgomery, alabama, the story of one particular case, an attempt to redefine what justice and mercy are, specific narrative on one hand but also a book about our values as a society and how to look at them in a different way. brian is another author who i think set the bar for the last thing i wanted because he took a subject we talked about more and more, mass incarceration and overpunishment. he talked about it in different ways and people were accustomed

to hearing about it and opened a door for people to come into that by humanizing the story and telling a dramatic narrative about one particular case, emotional, people find handholds, but at the same time did reorient our entire thinking about what justice is, what mercy is and who we are as a society, not just who people in death valley are but what are our values, what values of our society to incarcerate the number of people we do and the number of people -- that we do. asked questions about that. that would be another prime example. i did a book with jay the called decoded. the story of jay-z's life through his music and that to me

is also a book that fits the model of what i want to do. a lot of musical biographies, this is a music biography, and the main thrust, make people rethink what rap music was, rethink what that period of time rap music came out in the 80s and reorient our understanding of that so we can understand the connected people on a personal level, personal story and force readers to think about that period, that art form in a different way. >> host: would you say you published these books, what does that mean? what is the work involved? >> i was executive editor for 10 years, this was my last position was i work with a few

publishers, we worked as a team in terms of helping in this book so it starts with the activation of the book and they serve part in a different way. every book i work on is in a different way. either they come through agents or i approach the writers myself or i have a conversation with someone and decide to make it to the book, and then i work with the writers on developing the idea and give broad strokes and i hear from journalists, helping direct their recordings and before they have written the word you are working with them on how to gather materials for the book and what leads will follow and try to think ahead to how the information they are gathering turns into a narrative and where the gaps are and the idea and then the writer goes

away and i edit and some things are conceptual and it becomes about structure, organization, tone, style and literary qualities and another layer when you are doing line editing, word by word, a word right here to be here, that is the editorial job and you see as an editor, sort of manage the production process, the interior design and work with the markets on developing marketing plans, sales people, one of the more essential part of the job in

positioning the book, and the way to take with them wherever we go and that is one of the key functions, and the most concise way, that is something everyone in the company can use. the writer goes out and talks to the audience, crystallizes the book into its most pure and digestible form. >> host: how did you get into this? >> guest: my first bout of publishing was when i was in high school. a senior year was either you could do college courses or an internship, you completed your high school requirements and i worked for a book packager and that job lead to other jobs when i was still in college and my

first real job in publishing, did some writing and research and took others across my young impressionable life and my first real job in publishing, got a job as an editorial assistant and got there for five years or so and rose up the ranks, scientific, technical, medical publisher but works with a small group of people in that company and was able to do -- spoke to me personally. i did a couple books, like a black research library, kind of historic repository of african-american literature and i did some work with kevin powell at wiley, and i was able to work with and publish the

black and latino and other writers who were forming a new literary movement, a new center of gravity and that helps define my perspective. >> host: in a recent new york times magazine profile of you and your work, the writer vincent cunningham says chris jackson stand between the largely white culture making machinery and artists writing from the margin. do you agree with that? >> i wouldn't say i stand alone. that is my aspiration, my aspiration is not the same as

writers on the margin. although that may at times -- it is interesting - particularly writers from mainstream points of view, to allow them to tell their stories or speak to their ideas without feeling they have to but there is a gatekeeper between them and their audiences who will diminish their ideas, shape their ideas and make their ideas acceptable to a perceived mainstream media on the other end. i want to help them create work that has great integrity and i feel the best books but i talk about already, across my list

over the years, that they think sticks where the writer is able to express themselves and their ideas with the greatest integrity without feeling they are pandered to, so what the public industry as a whole or any gatekeeper function is instead of letting that writer fully express their ideas and craft, tries to make them fit into a category and some perceived reader on the end, the ideal reader for industries come of the readers we have identified as their primary readers have looked a lot like people who work in the publishing companies, but it is to help people to get access to

that machinery, and without having to sacrifice their work. >> host: are you in a unique place in publishing? >> guest: not just people who think differently than people bringing new ideas and new energy, but there is also always been people of color in publishing and one of the reasons i am happy to do the work i do like random house because random house in some ways, built by writers of color, morrison or rob ellison or whoever, and gave that company what it had and filled the books and financed a company and always had a place there and it

has not always been well represented in the editorial staff in particular in publishing. a black publisher at random house, without nearly enough. still almost scandalous, and 1% of editorial staff were flat. in terms of staffing, with the imprint to a degree, i am aware of that being a problem, but the industry is more aware that it is a solution to that. i don't want to think of myself as being unique because there

are others. >> host: where did you grow up? >> guest: new york, harlem in the grand housing project, the last few years of my life, another housing further up. >> host: what was it like? >> guest: it was great, it was raised, my father died when i was very young, and my sister, was important to me, taught me to read, and college elementary school, selected school in my neighborhood and i had an interesting mix life where i was part of the time in harlem, and

part of the time i was in this cosmopolitan intellectually aggressive school, and in the 1980s it was hard, we were not well off, and it is an important part of my life and finding people in literature, it was life-changing for me. and sort of pieces of the canon fanning out the poet and things like that, not only were they doing work i recognized but idiomatically, voices i understood and recognized, but people who literally did the

work which helped me rethink my own experience as a marginalized person in a ghetto. this place that was at the center in some ways of the cultural movement in american history. >> host: are you a writer yourself? >> guest: i write occasionally, but i would not call myself a writer. it is good to write for editors because it reminds you how hard it is. when looking at a blank page, art and ideas on the blank page, conjure stories and narratives out of it, doing that myself reminds me how difficult it is and how much i can honor that. occasionally i will do a piece

for a magazine. i would not call myself an editorial. >> host: what was the process of acquiring between the world and me? is there a competition for that book? >> guest: we were both much younger. we had a conversation with his agents, fantastic agents, long time agents. gloria and i were talking, and we talked and had an idea for a book but kept talking and came up with an idea for the first book. and his father, and 7 or 8 years ago, and in that time, the

beautiful struggle came out, and started writing for the atlantic, developing an enormous following. and the case for reparations, blockbuster piece of journalism, and the civil war has become a fascination for them. and he never offered anyone else. and the civil war book never happened. and not sure what we were going to do, and not sure he wanted to

write the book anymore, and the last couple years, the last two years, the trayvon martin case, what happened in baltimore, what happened in charleston, young black people, and victimized and make some kind of response to that and a meeting with the president one time, journalists for a briefing and we had a conversation, and a disagreement and when he left the meeting at the white house called me up and started talking about that next time. we were just going to read time

and time again that a book you can sit down in one sitting and it was urgent and immediate. and also duty. he went through draft to something worthy of that. and it would be written as a letter to transform it. and got to a book with minor -- >> host: did you know what you had? >> guest: not until probably the last draft. the book had issues, serious

issues, a struggle getting the voice right particularly and the book, that is a book about a meditation on a very large subject, pulled through the memoirs, from beginning to end, and is the story of a president who was killed. trying to shape that into something coherent was difficult and a voice that could carry us through this story, to the point he decided it was generated as a letter, the fat got sucked out of it, and the narrative became a narrative, supercomplicated issues to a 15-year-old, turning on the news and seeing peers

killed, and that is what the book is. it was clear that it wasn't going -- and follow anywhere the case, uniquely brilliant. and radiating that -- when we got there, it was great. he didn't get that sense until he started sharing it.

very different background, and very similar take on the world. and where we are coming from. and maybe i love it too much were too close to it and gave some people who work with me at random house and their responses were equally powerful and deeply moved and that is something that people here this. >> host: why are you living there? >> guest: he has been living there for a year. he has been learning french for

a long time, one of these systems, a subplot, never traveled out of the country until he was 8. he wanted his son to have an opportunity to live overseas, with them as a family, and going to college, wanted his wife to love her and he had an opportunity to do that. and like a scene in worldviews, how do you start in baltimore, i started in harlem thinking the world was a constrained place, there is always going to be a low between you and the world, your world will always be in a

box. that is where he chose to go. >> host: where did the title come from? >> guest: the book was originally called trouble for my country, that was the original title. which was the title when it was still -- and then, served as a working title for a long time. there is a poem -- richard right:that the title comes from. stumbling on a scene -- feeling like the distance between the narrator of the poem and the world is blocked in this case,

was a scene of a lynching. that is where it came from. there was a little back and forth about the title. we are like brothers in good and bad ways, crazy all the time. there was a back and forth so i thought it was a soft title, didn't mean enough. he was certain that was the right title. he was so certain, if you are that certain we will go with it and he was right. another thing, thinking about this in some cases you trust the writer and i have always felt that way and sometimes they are wrong, sometimes crazy. a lot of times they have been living with this thing as long as they have and we feel that level of conviction and passion about something, i am happy.

he was right. beautiful title. >> host: is narrative nonfiction a real specialty? >> guest: we are going through an interesting moment because there was a moment 10 or 15 years ago when it became a category that people identified and a lot of journalists doing great work. narrative nonfiction, midnight in the garden of good and evil is one of them, the orchid piece, perfect storm, great narratives that use fiction for nonfiction. right now what is happening is

an ongoing form of journalism that is good and the audience has its place in publishing and even more interesting with nonfiction which is where these genres are blurring, criticism and memoir and negative, between the world it is a great example, there is reporting in that, where he goes and is doing journalism reporting, there is memoir in that, criticism, advancing of ideas in that. or the argonauts or even fred renken, these are books that are playing with different forms of nonfiction in an interesting way and fits together through a personal narrative, brings it

all together but leslie jamison is another person from that. >> it is a -- it is something i am very interested in. >> all right. so one world is starting up and who are the authors in your book

you acquired? >> i have two new books. -- from tom has. one is fiction and one is non-fiction. they are still in development so i cannot say much but one is coming out in the fall of 2017. i am doing a book with a woman nam named shara hoot, a pulitzer prize winner play. it is a family memoir that is about bigger ideas and about the drug war and war overseas and class and race.

it will be running on opening night for three plays she wrote each were finals with for the u pulitzer prize. she is a genius go that is going to be exciting. it happened because she read seen the world in me and was thinking about thinking about a book in the heist. she and i met and talked for two hours and she went away and wrote up a little proposal for

what she really wanted to do based on that conversation and it was brilliant and we are doing the book now. i am doing a book with a guy named marlon who is living in turkey but is from syria, with the artist and journalist molly crabapple. it is a memoir of the syrian war from the arab springs to the refuge crisis and the takeover and what it was like on the ground. he was a student with two of his best friends got caught up in the liberation movement starting with the arab springs. two friends became fighters with rebel groups. one of them was killed and the other one ends up working with more extremist islamic group.

he ended up in roca which is being occupied by isis. he found a way to get on twitter and started giving reports of what was happening on the ground during the worst of the war and ended up having to flee as many people do from syria and became part of the russia refuge. he is able to talk about three major moments in that recent history but some really u human on the ground and thoughtful perspective. he is someone who in his writing grapples with the ethical and moral issues around the choices he makes but also telling a dramatic narrative. and it is illustrated by molly crabappleal who is a writer i worked with before on a book i did before who is a great writer and illustrator. they have done a few

collaborations that vanity fair has published already. this is a version of that laboration. i am doing a book with alex wagoner who is at the atlantic -- collaboration -- but used to be on mnbc about immigrants and refuges and exile. one side of her family is european and has the story of exile and coming to america and she is talking about the larger issues about what american identity is. that is going to be fantastic. >> final question, chris jackson, what is the jackson mcnelly bookstore in new york where booktv has been several times. >> mcnelly-jackson actually. >> i apologize.

>> it is a great store on tenth street in soho. it is named after my firm and it is own -- after my son -- and it is run by his mother. i think it is the best independent bookstore in new york although there are many great independent bookstores in new york. it is two levels. there is a picture shop around the corner and it is opening potentially a couple new stores in downtown manhattan that are in development. it has been open over ten years and you know, it is funny, because we talk about the trends and independent book publishing and when first opening the store our big concern was making sure we were far enough away from a borders and barnes and nobles.

borders shouldn't have been an issue because it doesn't exist but all of the barnes and nobles that were closed to soho and manhattan are closed now which is stunning. but they have thriving stores in new york still. so there is a cafe and in many ways it is like a model for what a great independent bookstore can be. the anchor to that community that is built up around it in lolita. but it has like a real -- it is really all about the case level of the book sellers there and their passion and their ability to connect with that customer base they have down there. it is beautiful and i recommend people come there. >> chris jackson has been our

guest one world is the name of the book coming up. >> this is the biggest embezzlement scam you have never heard of. rita cronwell's case is the biggest municipal fraud in history. before cronwell brought it into spotlight, dixon was famous for being ronald reagan's childhood home. the town had three employees and rita was controller and treasurer. the majority of jobs were part time. the mayor made $9,000 and he had a cadillac showroom somewhere. cronwall was a secretary to the mayor out of high school and appointed to her city financial post in 1983. it was a sweet deal for her. she was a horse lover and eventually became what was one