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Who

Julavits is an author and editor of the alt-literary magazine The Believer. She's also the wife of novelist Ben Marcus.

Backstory

Long before she became anti-snark's poster child, Julavits was just another New York waitress with an MFA hoping to make it as an author. Fate smiled on her 30th birthday when, following the publication of one of her short stories in Esquire, her agent Henry Dunow clinched a $500,000, two-book deal with editor Faith Sale at G.P. Putnam's Sons. Her first novel, The Mineral Palace, a depression-era story of sexual corruption and infanticide, was published in 2000 to mediocre reviews. Two more novels have followed: 2003's The Effect of Living Backwards, about a terrorist hijacking, and 2006's The Uses of Enchantment, a coming-of-age tale featuring a young girl's faked abduction. She remains best known, though, for "Rejoice! Believe! Be Strong and Read Hard!", the anti-snark manifesto she wrote for the debut issue of The Believer, the exceedingly precious Dave Eggers-financed lit mag that she co-founded and co-edits. In a mere 18,000 words, Julavits argued that essentially, book reviewers shouldn't be so mean, a sentiment apparently inspired by a nasty review she got from her ex-husband's pal Sam Sifton of the Times.

Personal

Julavits divorced her first husband, Manny Howard, in the late 1990s. (He later wrote an essay in the Times that suggested the relationship dissolved after he stole $6,000 from her bank account.) In 2002, she married fellow fiction writer and Columbia prof Ben Marcus. They have two children and divide their time between Brooklyn (New York) and Brookline (Maine).

No joke

You'd be well advised not to bring up "Rejoice! Believe! Be Strong and Read Hard!" should you meet Julavits in person. She once threatened that she'd shoot herself if, as someone had suggested, it's what she's going to be best remembered for.