A New York Minute With Brock Colyar

June 23, 2021

The author of our new nightlife newsletter on eavesdropping, lip gloss, and Zelda Fitzgerald


New York Magazine Writer Brock Colyar

The team of journalists at The Cut and New York magazine work hard to bring you conversation-starting stories. But who exactly are these editors and writers? Get to know them with a "New York Minute," our interview series in which we ask staffers about their lives and careers.

Next up: Writer Brock Colyar, the author of our new newsletter are u coming?, a peek into the city's suddenly booming party scene.

GET TO KNOW BROCK

You started at New York while you were still in college, and now you're a full-time writer for the magazine. What attracted you to New York (the publication and the city)?
My attraction to New York the city was all a bit of a cliché. I was a queer kid growing up in Tennessee who wanted to be a writer, so New York seemed like the only sustainable place to be. I went to school outside of Chicago and spent a summer in L.A., but they didn't really work out. I wanted to be one of those people who moved to New York, never looked back, and never left. And now here I am!

As for New York the magazine, in college I was a gender-studies major and really interested in how to do compelling journalism on feminist topics. I was an intern at Ms., which was born right here in the pages of New York, and an intern on Peggy Orenstein's book Boys and Sex. Those interests meant that I was a Rebecca Traister superfan. Like that one time Chris Hayes tweeted, "Actual thing just said in our office: 'Wait did the new Traister just drop!?!'" That was me. About the same time, I was falling in love with magazines and magazine writing — flipping through magazines has always felt like meditating to me — so the more I read Rebecca, the more I branched out and discovered how much I loved New York as a whole for its reporting, its commentary, and that irreplicable, witty, not too earnest, provocative-at-the-right-times point of view. Eventually, as with the city, I didn't want to go anywhere else.

What did an average day look like for you when you were the assistant to New York editor-in-chief David Haskell?
I like to joke that it was the kindest, most pleasant version of The Devil Wears Prada. David's an incredibly busy person heading such a massive operation, and so the job is mostly doing anything to make his day run smoother. In pre-quarantine times, a majority of my day was spent corralling editors and writers into different meetings. It's been absolutely thrilling to see the inner workings of the magazine in that way. Spending time in the rooms where decisions are made about cover lines, story directions, and tone is really the biggest luxury of being the assistant. You learn what the editors like and what they don't like and can use that information to develop your own ideas. And this has always been an incredibly generous team of editors. I can't count how many times David or another has stopped to ask me what I thought about something. That's a dream come true.

Read the rest of the interview on nymag.com, including Brock's go-to pump-up song, the book that ate them alive recently, and the single most important piece of advice they've received working at New York.