Mallory Smart on Her Multilayered Career as an Author and Publisher

Welcome to I’m a Writer But, where two writers-and talk to other writers-and about their work, their lives, their other work, the stuff that takes up any free time they have, all the stuff they’re not able to get to, and the ways in which any of us get anything done. Plus: book recommendations, bad jokes, okay jokes, despair, joy, and anything else we’ve got going on that week. Hosted by Lindsay Hunter and Alex Higley.

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In this episode, Alex and Lindsay talk with Mallory Smart (The Only Living Girl in Chicago) about her publishing house, Maudlin House, looking for authors that make her want to write, horror movies, Dmitry Samarov, free writing, and more.

From the episode:

Mallory Smart: I only publish people that I aspire to write like. It’s always changing. Did I once fantasize about maybe having a huge, huge publishing house? Yeah. Do I understand how the landscape has changed? Definitely. I wouldn’t mind maybe even being an imprint for another press, or just being as steady as possible and keep growing. I guess it’s one of those, “we’ll see where it takes us.” I’ve become a lot more vigilant in who I work with. I do a lot more looking into the background. I won’t even check into someone’s writing until I do a really deep check.

Honestly, right now it’s more who has a message that we want to push most. We don’t like to publish books just for the sake of publishing them. There are so many books out there that are just kind of about nothing.

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Mallory Smart is a Chicago-based writer and Editor-in-Chief of the publishing house Maudlin House. She talks about music and literature on the podcast Textual Healing, and about horror movies on her podcast That Horrorcast. Her novel, The Only Living Girl In Chicago, just came out from Trident Press in August 2021.