How Camille Perri Paid the Bills While She Wrote the Books
“I worked as the super in exchange for cheap rent on a crappy little ground-floor apartment.”
Camille Perri is the author of the novels The Assistants and When Katie Met Cassidy, one of NPR’s Best Books of 2018. Among other jobs, Camille worked as a librarian, a ghostwriter of young adult fiction, books editor for Cosmopolitan and Esquire, and, of course, an assistant. Here’s how she made ends meet.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Medium: As a kid, what did going to work look like in your family?
Camille Perri: My father came to this country [from Italy] when he was 18. He was a tailor who worked at a dry cleaners, then in Men’s Suits at Macy’s. My mom was a library clerk. My sisters are older than me, so I saw them working a couple of jobs at a time, while they went to school; then they graduated to become an accountant and a teacher. We’re all worker-dogs — I’ve had a job since I was 12 years old, selling socks at the flea market. In the summers, I had two jobs.
