Episode 579: Kelsey McKinney
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Kelsey McKinney is a features writer and co-owner at Defector.com). She hosts the podcast Normal Gossip) and is the author of the upcoming book You Didn't Hear This From Me: (Mostly) True Notes on Gossip).

“I was always very interested in how you strategize a creative career. And I think that that is an unsexy thing to talk about, right? It's much sexier to be like, Oh, I love working on my sentence-level craft, which is not true for me. But I think that a lot of a creative career is understanding it is still a job, and then understanding how you make sure that within the container of the job you can do the work that you want to do. That is a really difficult balance to make. So if you can understand how people who have done it before you, you can copy them.”

Show notes:

• @mckinneykelsey)

• kelseymckinney.com)

• McKinney on Longform)

• McKinney’s Defector archive)

• 04:00 “Why Doesn’t Mrs. Dalloway Get a Day of Her Own?”) (Slate • Jan 2000)

• 13:00 “Chris Evans: American Marvel”) (Edith Zimmerman • GQ • July 2011)

• 23:00 McKinney’s Deadspin archive)

• 31:00 God Spare the Girls) (Harper Collins • 2022)

• 39:00 “Gossip Is Not a Sin”) (New York Times • July 2021)

• 43:00 You Didn’t Hear This From Me) (Viking • 2025)

• 58:00 “Learning To Play Piano When There Is No Recital”) (Defector • Dec 2023)

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