episode 076: Sara Harowitz

The Craft with May Globus

Sara Harowitz is one smart and witty woman. She’s also a wordsmith at heart, a long-time editor of publications such as the Huffington Post, SAD Mag, and MONTECRISTO Magazine. By day, she’s the director of content at vitruvi, where she led the creation of their in-house print & digital publication Our Natural Habitat. By night, she’s a literary agent at Westwood Creative Artists—it’s a recent side gig she landed, specializing in narrative nonfiction authors and helping bring their ideas to life.

She grew up in the suburbs of Richmond, a quiet and bookish young girl with two older brothers. Her father is an intellectual and a businessman, her mother a primary school teacher. During her teens, in addition to her love for books, dance was her main extra curricular: ballet, contemporary, jazz, and hip hop. Sara applied to Toronto Metropolitan University for their journalism program, where she found her groove in magazines and editing. After Toronto, she returned to home as a freelancer until landing her first job at the Huffington Post, officially launching her career as an editor. In 2022, Sara spent some of the summer in London, taking her certificate in Publishing through Columbia at Oxford University.

In this conversation, we talk about the natural way she found herself in journalism; what viral content was like when she first started as an editor and how she’s seen it evolve over the years; the HuffPo being at the frontline for how news was produced for a younger audience; what makes a good journalist; the process of creating Our Natural Habitat and vitruvi’s refreshed branding; the state of publishing right now and #booktok; what a literary agent does; traditional publishing vs. self-publishing; and much more.

Please enjoy this exploration of life, journalism and many other things with the incredible Sara Harowitz.

Much love,
May

TIMESTAMPS

5:45 - Growing up

13:45 - Her as a teen and her passions then

15:40 - Knowing she wanted to be a writer

20:33 - Viral content when she started and how she’s seen it change over the years

24:20 - What makes a good journalist and her core values

28:46 - Her heroes in journalism

31:35 - Creative process for making a magazine

36:34 - Vitruvi rebrand

38:28 - Surprising facts about the publishing industry she hadn’t known before

40:53 - What a literary agent is and does

41:59 - Self publishing vs. traditional publishing

45:14 - How advances work and what it means for the author & publishers

47:22 - A book that she often gifts to others

48:47 - Is there a literary character that she most identifies with?

48:47 - How she feels about the written word and what it has brought to her life

54:35 - Final question

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