Kendra Rae Phillips—Richard Wagner

Richard Wagner’s relationship with Kendra Rae Phillips is defined by a contradiction between his professed early respect for her editorial judgment and his later devaluation of Burning Heart, the book that made Diana Gordon famous. He tells Nella Rogers that he stepped aside from editing the novel when he learned Kendra wanted to work on it, but Nella later remembers his dismissive assessment of the book and sees him benefiting from its success. The narrative establishes grounds for resentment while leaving Kendra’s own feelings and any direct confrontation unshown.

Early Respect and Editorial Deference

During a conversation with Nella about Burning Heart, Richard says he had read and loved an early draft and recognized that it would become a major success. He says he declined the opportunity to edit it once he learned Kendra had some interest in doing so, because he believed Kendra would be the better editor for Diana. Nella takes this as evidence that Kendra, rather than Richard, had discovered Diana; Richard does not endorse that interpretation, but affirms his belief that Kendra was exceptional at the time.

The account offers a version of Richard as capable of recognizing Kendra’s talent and yielding professional authority to her. That recollection complicates the later picture of his conduct: the conflict is not presented as uninterrupted hostility, but as a rupture between an earlier gesture of deference and his subsequent judgment of the book she helped shape.

The Book’s Devaluation

Years later, Nella recalls Richard saying that Burning Heart seemed too niche to find a real audience. In the same recollection, she remembers him pairing that assessment with comments that Diana was pretty enough and Nella smart enough to gain traction if Black performers could become international pop stars. His praise of the women is thus attached to a conditional, market-oriented view of their prospects, while the book itself is treated as commercially marginal.

That judgment sits uneasily beside Richard’s account of having recognized the early draft’s potential. The difference is consequential: he had once described Burning Heart as a book he knew would be huge, but later, in Nella’s memory, he cast its audience as a problem and framed its success through the marketability of its Black creators. The evidence does not show Kendra hearing these remarks or responding to them, so the resentment associated with the relationship is conveyed through the discrepancy between Richard’s claims and his later treatment of the work rather than through a direct exchange between them.

Success, Visibility, and Nella’s Interpretation

Nella remembers Richard moving into the public spotlight as soon as Burning Heart became a bestseller. At a later diversity event cosponsored by Wagner Books, she sees his financial support and public declaration of support for increasing diversity in publishing against the history she associates with him. She recalls that during her first week at Wagner, Richard invited her to dinner, where his wife advised her to tame her hair and speak as if she were from Northampton rather than Newark. She also remembers his remarks about Burning Heart and the prospects of its creators. These memories lead Nella to suspect that Richard’s visible support for diversity reflects an ulterior calculation; that is her assessment, not a motive independently confirmed by the account.

The relationship’s central tension is therefore between recognition and appropriation. Richard says he recognized Kendra’s ability and stepped back in her favor, yet Nella’s later recollection casts him as a critic of the book’s market prospects who reappeared in its public success. Kendra’s own response remains outside the evidence presented here, but the contrast makes Richard’s shifting position the basis on which the relationship’s resentment is understood.