Allow Me To Reintroduce Myself

edited by Steve Reiss

I don’t know how to write small.

I’m not sure I ever did. 

But over the past couple of years, I have had to think more seriously than at any other time in my adult life about whether to acquiesce to the ensmallification of my writing. 

How much, if at all, am I willing to shrink my voice and thus, myself, in exchange for security be it economic security, professional security, security from a federal government that is openly contemptuous toward my existence as a Black person, as a Jewish person, as a woman, as a feminist, as a writer, as a lover of peace, truth, democracy, degenerate art, and critical engagement with the world. As a person whose nearest and dearest family members are immigrants. The conclusion I reached is that if I want to remain true to myself and to my beloved Constitutionally-protected calling, I need to be brave and become a publisher. “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one,” the press critic A.J. Liebling once remarked. The history algorithm has dropped us off in the most high stakes period of use it or lose it in my lifetime. So today I am throwing open the doors to my new home as a writer.

Welcome to Soraya [dot] Press!

Allow me to explain how I arrived here, where I want to go, and why I’d like you to join me in running into this new year of 5787 and beyond.

First, some background: I am a culture critic of some renown. In 2020, I became the third Black woman, after Margo Jefferson (1995) and Robin Givhan (2006), to be recognized by the Pulitzer Prize board for criticism. Unlike Margo and Robin, I did not win. I was a finalist. I did win the George Jean Nathan Award for dramatic criticism in 2018-2019. I’ve been awarded fellowships from Princeton University and the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center. And I was honored by Morgan State University, which awards the Vernon Jarrett Medal for journalistic excellence. (I didn’t win that one either, but I was thrilled to be second banana to New York Times writer Audra D.S. Burch. I bought two Mont Blanc pens with the prize money, one for myself and one for my editor).