Photo: Ilana Masad

Brief Biography:

Ilana Masad is an Israeli-American writer living in NYC. She is an agent’s assistant by day, a writer for McSweeney’s, Bustle, and The Jewish Currents by night, and a freelance editor, transcriber, and proofreader in whatever those hours in between are. Her work has been published in The New Yorker’s Daily Shouts, Printer’s Row, Tin House’s Open Bar, Four Chambers Press, The Rumpus, The Toast, Hypertext, and more. She is the founder of TheOtherStories.org, a podcast for new, emerging, and struggling writers.

Geosi Gyasi: You’re a writer, Editor and Imaginator. Could you tell us what you actually do as an Imaginator?

Ilana Masad: Into every generation an imaginator is born: one girl in all the world, a chosen one. She alone will wield the strength and skill to fight the muses, inspiration, and the forces of blank pages; to stop the spread of writer’s block…