Emily Gould

Submission 8,855

About

Emily Gould is an American blogger and novelist best known for her personal blog, Emily Magazine, and her time spent as the editor of Gawker.

Online History

Emily Magazine

On October 13th, 2005, Gould launched her personal blog, Emily Magazine^[6] with an entry titled "Dumb as a Post," which explained her motivation for starting a blog:

"Welcome to my totally private diary on the internerd. Emily Magazine is here to fill a gaping niche: the world wide information superhighway does not have enough first person blah blah blah. And even if it was already glutted, my thoughts would be different and special because they’re mine."

Gawker

Goulding became an editor at Gawker ^[9] on November 1st, 2006, after working as an associate editor at Hyperion Books. She became instrumental in defining the site's voice. On April 6th, 2007, she appeared on Larry King Live and was interviewed by Jimmy Kimmel. During the interview they discussed the Gawker Stalker map, a section of the site that chronicled celebrity sightings around New York City, which his fellow panelists believed could lead to real stalking and violence against celebrities. Kimmel also accused the site of publishing celebrity gossip stories that were not fact checked and were not true.

She left Gawker^[8] on December 31st, 2007.

Oversharing

On May 25th, 2008, the New York Times^[14] published an essay written by Gould titled "Exposed," which described her career before and during her time at Gawker, as well as her relationship with a co-worker at Gawker and how she felt about blogging about it and having it written about, using the term oversharing. The piece was credited with giving online discussions about “oversharing” in the blogosphere momentum.

Cooking the Books

On August 8th, 2010, Gould launched her web series, Cooking the Books^[7] on the web video platform Blip.TV The series features Gould interviewing authors while they prepare a dish. The series ran for 25 episodes, and featured many famous authors including Jennifer Egan and Sam Lipsyte.

Emily Books

On October 4th, 2011, Gould launched^[3] Emilly Books,^[4] the first independent e-bookstore, with Ruth Curry. The e-bookstore also acts as a book subscription service, with visitors able to purchase a subscription so the one book per month they add to their store downloads automatically, or they can purchase the books on a title by title basis. Each month the store also features essays on the selected book. The first book added to their store was the novel No More Nice Girls by Ellen Willis. In September 2013, the store launched an ios7 app^[5] which allows subscribers to read each month's book along with corresponding essays and interviews.

Gould created her personal Tumblr blog^[2] on June 5th, 2009. As of June 2014, Gould's Twitter account^[1] has gained over 13,000 followers.

Criticism

On May 23rd, 2008, the New York Post^[10] published an article titled "The Dangers of Blogger Love," written by Joshua David Stein, another Gawker blogger who had dated Gould and felt frustrated that she had blogged about their relationship.

Edrants' Essay

On June 26th, 2014, literary critic Edward Champion posted an essay on his site Edrants^[12] titled "Emily Gould, Literary Narcissism, and the Middling Millennials." The essays, which criticizes young writers, especially young women who Champion believes to be mediocre and more concerned with social media than their craft, focuses on Gould in particular, with Champion describing her as:

"an easily manipulated rube fueled by the prospect of spite."

The essay lead to many in the literary community angrily criticizing Champion on Twitter^[11] on the same day, including Gould herself.

The anger on Twitter lead Champion to send out a tweet which implied he was suicidal, though later that day he tweeted^[13] that he had decided against it and would be seeking help and staying off Twitter.