Karly Quadros is a culture writer and editor from the Pacific Northwest and currently based in Brooklyn. Her words have appeared in The Cut, Slate, New Republic, Paste, and Cultured.

Q: This summer, you published a piece in Slate about how wildfires are the flavors of wines to change. Can you tell us how this idea came about? 

A: This piece ended up being a confluence of a lot of my experiences. We were assigned a final feature in my magazine writing workshop, but the contents of the piece were pretty open-ended. I've often written about wildfires, especially in the Pacific Northwest, where I'm from, and I have some experience working on vineyards in Italy. I started thinking about this piece around the time that the fires in Los Angeles had happened, and I was noticing a lot about the parallels between them and the 2020 wildfires in Oregon. I'm really interested in the emotional, human side of climate change, and wine in particular is incredibly evocative of a sense of place and time. Along the way, I discovered a new study about evolving public perceptions of smoke flavors in wine; that's when I knew I was onto something resonant.

Q: How did the pitching process go for you?

A: At first, the pitching process was tough. I was turned down by five major outlets, either because they were working on a similar piece or because it didn't make sense for their editorial priorities. I had some interest from Travel & Leisure, but ultimately I walked away from that because they were looking for something that was different from the story I was reporting. Through it all, I was tweaking my pitch, especially heds and deks, but ultimately, the most important part was just finding an outlet and an editor that it made sense for.

I always workshop a pitch at pitch collective before I send it out. It's super helpful to have those extra eyes and ears. My pitch had a couple major components: pre-reporting, a timely study, a news peg (LA fires/wildfire season starting), and a topic that's been largely underreported at a national level. That helped a lot.

Q: What did you learn during the editing process? 

A: My editor at Slate was incredibly professional and helpful. He mostly made minor line edits. The one major change that he wanted was a bit more of me in the piece -- Slate is a bit more conversational and voicey -- so I actually got to add a small section about my own experiences in the Willamette Valley in 2020.

Q: What did you learn during the pitching and publishing process that you think would be helpful to other writers looking to get their work published? 

A: I think it can be really discouraging to deal with rejection when you're freelancing, but at the end of the day, it's about finding the home that makes the most sense for your pitch. You can have a great story, but it's just not going to connect if you're pitching it to the wrong place. Editors really like it when you have a sense of their verticals and what they usually publish.