Who

Wherewithal Press operates out of lower Manhattan, and drags in help from creative people — designers, visual artists, record label owners — on a project-by-project basis.

But the sole principal is Megan Hustad, a writer and editor who has successfully shepherded a wide variety of books onto store shelves, both as a member of the editorial departments of the Knopf Group, Basic Books, and Counterpoint Press, and since 2005, as an independent consultant. She has worked on history, art history, business and management theory, popular science, political science, policy polemics, memoirs, manifestos, first novels, short story collections, essay anthologies, and social and cultural criticism.

She has authored two books of her own. The first, How to Be Useful, was published in 2008 in the U.S. and U.K. and (mostly) warmly received. The second book is radically different, and scheduled for release by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux in 2012. Sometimes people ask if writing gets in the way of editing or vice versa and the answer to that is “no.” (They are wonderfully complementary.)

Occasionally she publishes short pieces in venues like the New York Times, Slate, Salon, The Daily Beast, Truthdig, New York Post, The Big Money (now defunct) and The Awl. Years ago she recorded some commentary for American Public Media’s Marketplace.

In 2010 she was awarded a residency at Denniston Hill and a MacDowell Fellowship in support of her nonfiction. Before all this, she worked retail and can cashier like nobody’s business.