“You’re a co-pilot, you are a therapist, you are an archivist,” reflects journalist and cultural critic Gerrick Kennedy of his role as a ghostwriter.
Kennedy is the co-author of the just-published memoir Phases, from singer, songwriter and actress Brandy—an immediate #1 New York Times best-seller.
He is the author of two previous books, and his work has appeared in a variety of publications, including Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, GQ, Men’s Health, Spin, and Playboy. A former staff writer for The Los Angeles Times, where he covered pop music and culture, Kennedy was honored in 2012 with an Emerging Journalist of the Year award by the National Association of Black Journalists. Regarding his current collaboration with Brandy, he had known the multi-platinum, Grammy Award-winning artist for several years before they decided to work together on her memoir—and after his first few ghostwriting assignments, he’s still getting used to his emerging role as the caretaker of someone else’s story.
“You wear so many hats when you are doing a collaborative project,” he says. “There are so many conversations that you have with a person, and so much of it is going to be, ‘This is me releasing it, and I don’t want to hold this myself anymore… and now you can carry it with you, but it’s not for the book.’ It gives you context. It gives you ideas. It gives you understanding. But it ultimately just ends up becoming another secret.”
Join us as we consider what it takes to honor your subject’s privacy while finding a way to attach those “secrets” to a public-facing narrative.
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