Piker will urge authors (especially junior ones) to think about the publishing process from within the context of their own scholarship and professional trajectory, rather than from within a peer review and selection process that they don’t control. He will consider questions such as “What sort of article am I writing?”; “When do I need it?”; and “What will it do for me intellectually and professionally?” He’ll end by talking about rejection and what it doesn’t mean.

Joshua Piker is Editor of the William and Mary Quarterly and Professor in the History Department at William & Mary. As Editor, he has worked to expand the methodological, temporal, and geographic reach of the field of early American history while also recruiting a more diverse group of manuscript authors and peer reviewers. Those goals have led him to organize joint issues with Journal of the Early Republic(2017), Early American Literature(2018), Hispanic American Historical Review(2023), and Journal of Slavery and Data Preservation(2024). His own published scholarship focuses on the intersection of Indigenous history and early American history, and in particular on using community history and microhistory to center—and develop the implications of—Indigenous people, places, and stories. His two books, Okfuskee: A Creek Indian Town in Colonial America and The Four Deaths of Acorn Whistler: Telling Stories in Colonial America, were published by Harvard University Press.