Author Miriam Landis On The Book That Changed Her Life

An Interview With Jake Frankel

Do a little bit every day, and that’s enough: I used to think I had to solve the world’s problems in one day. But that’s unrealistic if you’re doing something big, and I learned that when my husband and I remodeled our house. Some days, we tore down a wall. Others, we measured for tile. Your best is enough, and things take the time they take.

Books have the power to shape, influence, and change our lives. Why is that so? What goes into a book that can shape lives? To address this we are interviewing people who can share a story about a book that changed their life, and why. As a part of our series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Miriam Landis.

Miriam Landis is a faculty member at the Pacific Northwest Ballet and author of the book “Lauren in the Limelight.” She was a LitCamp fellow, and an assistant editor at Simon & Schuster, Hyperion, and the Amazon Books team. A Stanford grad, she was also a student at the School of American Ballet and a professional ballerina with Miami City Ballet. When not writing, teaching, or dancing, she enjoys life on Lake Washington alongside her husband and four children. In addition to “Lauren in the Limelight,” she is the author of two young adult novels, “Girl in Motion” and “Girl on Pointe” (previously published as “Breaking Pointe”).

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory” and how you grew up?

Sure, thanks for having me. I grew up as the daughter of the only rabbi in the state of Utah (at that time), and from early on, I spent most of my time studying ballet at the Ballet West Conservatory and the University of Utah. My parents joked that I loved being in The Nutcracker because I didn’t get a Christmas tree at home. Ballet was my obsession and a career goal from a young age, and starting when I was thirteen, I went away for six weeks every summer to intensive programs at the San Francisco Ballet School and the Rock School of the Pennsylvania Ballet. When I was sixteen I spent the summer at the School of American Ballet in New York, and from there I stayed on in New York as a boarding student for my last two years of high school.

Let’s talk about what you are doing now, and how you achieved the success that you currently enjoy. Can you tell our readers a bit about the work you are doing?

This fall, I’m publishing a new middle-grade novel, Lauren in the Limelight, about three sixth-grade ballet students who go on pointe and audition for the Pacific Northwest Ballet School. I’m the book’s author and publisher, and this is my publishing company’s debut. Besides marketing and publicity, I write and work on new creative projects daily. My regular routine also involves being a mom to my four kids, eleven and under, and running a very busy household. I also teach six classes a week at the Pacific Northwest Ballet School. As for how I achieved that success, the most straightforward answer I can come up with is through giving and receiving enormous amounts of love and support (because no one achieves success alone), working hard with an optimistic attitude every day, being willing to put myself out there and go beyond my comfort zone, and following my biggest passions.

You are a successful leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

Here are three that served me well:

Perseverance: There’s a lot to be said for showing up, day after day, year after year. I’ve seen many talented people who took rejection to heart or lost interest and quit. The story of how Lauren in the Limelight came to be published illustrates this. After years of querying hundreds of agents and hearing that “ballet is too niche,” I decided to start my own publishing company and lead the mission myself. I just kept going. The only reason I dared to do that is because I’d had decades of experience showing up in both the ballet and publishing industries. I’d been a fly on the wall studying how artistic projects came to be, and those years of perseverance taught me what I needed to know to get it done.

Generosity: Whenever there was an opportunity to help people achieve their dreams, I pitched in with as much energy as possible to help them. This can be in small ways, like proofreading a friend’s professional email and sharing feedback, or in significant ways, like helping another author organize an event when you have the contacts they don’t (I have too many stories of doing this and can’t pick one, but most of those authors who I’ve helped along the way have cheered me on in return. Life is long and people remember who showed up for them). That’s the kind of energy I bring to my kids and ballet students, and that spirit of generosity does come back and grow legs. I’ve seen this trait modeled by many of my mentors, and it’s powerful.

Patience: In my experience, bad things happen fast, and the meaningful, very good things take a long, long time. All the achievements I’m the proudest of, my family, my dance career, and my writing career, only blossomed after years — and I mean, years — of failure and rejection. This was especially true in my life when it came to having children and struggling through many years of IVF failure. During one of my lowest moments in that process, a woman who had also been there said, “If you want to be a mother, you’ll be a mother. You’ll find a way.” That gave me courage. She was right. But it took years.

What’s the WHY behind the work that you do? Please share a story about this if you can.

I love making art because life can be very hard, and it gives me a deep sense of satisfaction to uplift others and help them feel seen. I’ve been a dance fan and a dancer on the stage, a reader and a writer, and each of those roles enriched my life and gave me some of my happiest moments. Regarding my work as a ballet teacher and the books I’ve written about dance, it all comes down to personal responsibility. After the depth of experiences and the challenges I had, at this point in my life and being in my position, I feel a sense of responsibility to make the ballet world more positive and inclusive. I have four young kids who are all ballet students, so I see their early ballet journey through their eyes and my own. I want my kids, and every individual who encounters dance to leave feeling like that interaction improved their life. In recent years, there has been much negativity surrounding ballet training and the ballet world, and I’d like to shift that conversation.

One story I’ll share is that years ago, I had a conversation with an author who had written something very harsh about the ballet world. Their writing made many excellent points I agreed with. I asked them, now that people have read your work, what’s the next step to improve the situation? How can we use your reporting to make positive change? The writer said they felt like they’d thrown a colossal bomb at the industry and now had to run away because the power players in the dance world hated them. I felt so sad that this writer felt their work was finished when I saw it as a beginning. I was frustrated that someone who had just begun to open essential conversations ran away from them. Her position also gave me a new understanding of why it was my responsibility to keep showing up and doing the work. It’s hard work! If I don’t engage in challenging conversations, who will?

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

I agree! I often blamed myself for my failures and thought something was wrong with me. Now, when I look back, I recognize the problem wasn’t necessarily my shortcomings; the problem was that I didn’t have enough help. At some points in my life, the only way things changed was because of the help of others. We are all only one person and only capable of so much alone.

I am deeply grateful to my husband, first and foremost. He’s the one who pulled my first novels out of a drawer ten years after I wrote and gave up on them and said, “Why don’t you publish these yourself?” After I’d given up on getting pregnant, he’s the one who said, “We’ll keep trying.” After years of literary agent rejections, he’s the one who said, “Start your own publishing house.” Sometimes, all it takes is someone who believes in you when you don’t believe in yourself.

Awesome! Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. I’m an author and I believe that books have the power to change lives. Can you please tell our readers about “The Book That Changed Your Life”? Can you share a story about how it impacted you?

The book that comes to mind is the memoir Another Life by the legendary Simon & Schuster editor-in-chief, Michael Korda. His assistant gave it to me during the summer I interned in the S&S editorial department as a college junior. Every day of that humid New York summer, I rode the subway from a sublet at Columbia University to Rockefeller Center with my nose in that book. I read it twice in a row, and I’ve never done that with a book since. The book, more than the internship, made me decide I wanted a career in publishing. I’d sit in the weekly editorial meetings like a fly on the wall and watch Korda pitch and reject manuscripts, larger-than-life in his polka-dot bow tie at the head of the table. The author and protagonist came to life before my very eyes. Then I’d read about his journey from a lowly editorial assistant to a famed publishing executive and the many celebrities and legendary writers he worked with for more than forty years before I ever set eyes on him. His writing made the publishing world seem hilarious, wildly entertaining, exciting, and endlessly stimulating. He wasn’t wrong.

What was the moment or series of events that made you decide that you wanted to take a specific course of action based on the inspiration from the book? Can you share a story about that?

The entire summer at S&S and reading that book made me decide to pursue a job as an editorial assistant at one of the big publishing houses. But I remember Korda’s assistant was sick one day, and I had to fill in at her desk. The great man himself asked me to write some rejection letters, and when he saw what I’d drafted, he said, “No, dear. You don’t need to explain why. Just say, ‘It’s not my cup of tea.’”

That was always his rejection letter. It wasn’t his cup of tea. As I sat there typing (on an actual typewriter because that’s how he still liked it back in 2005), I decided that this publishing life was my cup of tea.

Can you articulate why you think books in particular have the power to create movements, revolutions, and true change?

Books are the closest thing we have to mental telepathy. There isn’t a pressure to respond immediately to a book. You can digest it at a speed that matches your own; everyone processes and evolves at their own pace. So, reading can match all kinds of different minds. Reading and writing well requires energy and attention that we don’t have to summon in most areas of life to get through our days. You can scroll through your phone, cook dinner, drive a car, talk to friends, and still be somewhere else in your mind. But reading makes you show up, and when you do the work and mentally show up to anything, you inevitably take something away on a deeper level. Actual change takes so much energy from the deepest recesses of our minds, and books are the most effective way to access those dark corners.

A book has many aspects, of course. For example, you have the writing style, the narrative tense, the topic, the genre, the design, the cover, the size, etc. In your opinion, what are the main, essential ingredients needed to create a book that can change lives?

It’s simple: to make a book that changes lives, you need an author who can change lives. If the author has a genuine intention developed over many years, that goal is organically built into whatever book they produce. The book must be for the sake of the reader, not the writer. Barack Obama’s memoir is a perfect example. Before writing Dreams from My Father, he’d spent years as a community organizer, living improvement and change as a daily practice. The book was a natural outgrowth of who he was and the principles he lived by. Cover and marketing and all the practical aspects of a book matter, but at its heart, a timeless book must be an intentional act of generosity.

What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started My Career” and why?

1. Everything before age 40 is research: I thought I was “old” as a 20-year-old ballet dancer, but of course, back then, I thought the only thing I would ever be was a ballet dancer. Now that I’m 45 and watching my dance life merge with my publishing and personal life, I see a new chapter opening. The different eras of my career weren’t endpoints as I’d feared but building blocks to something bigger. Hindsight is 20/20, though.
2. The people matter more than the activity: I’ve been lucky to work beside industry giants and incredible colleagues. The individuals along the way inspired me and kept me going, not necessarily the work itself. Because there’s drudge work in any career. If you spend your days next to people who wow you and make you laugh and think, you’ll grow yourself without even realizing it. During my years with Miami City Ballet, I would often watch our artistic director, Edward Villella, dancing around in the back of class, even though his years on the stage as one of the greatest American male dancers were far behind him. Seeing that joy in him at that stage of his career set an example that I still summon today, over twenty years later. Now I’m the dance teacher dancing in the back of class for my own enjoyment.
3. Do a little bit every day, and that’s enough: I used to think I had to solve the world’s problems in one day. But that’s unrealistic if you’re doing something big, and I learned that when my husband and I remodeled our house. Some days, we tore down a wall. Others, we measured for tile. Your best is enough, and things take the time they take.
4. You can be a good person and still set boundaries: As young professionals, we often feel so grateful to have the jobs we love that we forget to value our own worth. I wish I’d known earlier that it was okay to say no when others pushed their work on me or when I worried that I’d get fired for not being perfect. When I first started at the Amazon Books team, I had a manager who saw me working at my desk late. She told me to go home and rest when I told her I was working on something that wasn’t due the next day. I wish I’d learned earlier to give myself that permission to take care of myself without waiting for someone in charge to give it to me.
5. Build a life, not just a career: The only thing you can count on in life is change, so expect that when things are bad in one area, it’s time to focus elsewhere, and inevitably, change will happen, and better things will come back around. When I left my ballet career and went to college as an older student, there were so many aspects of my personal life I realized I’d ignored while I’d made career my all-consuming focus. I expanded my world with new friends, hobbies, experiences, and wisdom by letting go of that laser career focus for a while. When my husband and I first had kids, my career again went on hold for many years. Now that work is taking over again, I’m so much more secure because I have a life that reaches in different directions.

The world, of course, needs progress in many areas. What movement do you hope someone (or you!) starts next? Can you explain why that is so important?

The progress I’m pushing for is to see the wider public excited about ballet. I love the art form so deeply; it has informed my life. On a broader level, I want people to renew their enthusiasm for arts education and the liberal arts. It broke my heart during the pandemic to see dance and so many of life’s pleasures be the first things to go. My husband is a doctor, so I’m not under the illusion that artists save the world, but I believe that empathy is critical to a functioning society. One of the most important takeaways from a liberal arts education is the ability to put your mind in someone else’s shoes. Art also gives joy, and happy people are kinder and more generous.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

I started posting ballet tips on my social media accounts after my adult ballet students said it would be a helpful reference for them, so my social media is a mix of fun and education and book stuff and who-knows-what. Like my writing, I aim to make it about the audience rather than me (so if you want me to post something specific, let me know). You can visit my website at www.miriamlandis.com and keep up with me on Instagram, Tiktok, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Linkedin (I’m most active on Insta and Tiktok). I love collaborating with my students, colleagues, and friends on my posts.

Thank you so much for taking the time to share with us and our readers. We know that it will make a tremendous difference and impact thousands of lives. We are excited to connect further and we wish you so much joy in your next success.