About this episode
This episode discusses the concept of 'green-lighting' oneself in creative industries, inspired by Brooke Warner's TED talk.
Brooke Warner, the founder of She Writes Press, gave a TED talk in 2017 called “Green-Lighting Yourself” that I have been thinking about for years. The argument: the traditional creative industries, publishing and film and music, have shifted toward green-lighting only artists who are already famous or who have celebrity connections. The writers and filmmakers and musicians who refused to wait for those industries to discover them, who chose to publish or produce their own work without permission, have a name. Warner calls them green-lighters. The line from her talk that I cannot let go: “Legitimacy cannot be bestowed. You have to take it.” This episode is about what that line means in 2026. There is a question every writer who has been carrying a book for a long time eventually has to face. Are you going to keep waiting for someone to greenlight your work, or are you going to greenlight it yourself. In this episode I share three of my own green-lighter moments. Co-founding C&R Press at thirty-two. Launching Crossroads at fifty-two. And the book I am writing right now, The Crisis of Being Nobody, which will publish through Crossroads because no traditional gatekeeper is going…
People in this episode
Host: Chad Prevost
Guest: Brooke Warner
Topics covered
- self-publishing
- creative industries
- green-lighting
- authorship
- independence
Keywords
- green-lighting
- self-publishing
- creative independence
- Brooke Warner
- C&R Press
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: She Writes Press, C&R Press, Crossroads
Books & works: Green-Lighting Yourself, The Crisis of Being Nobody
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