Suppose you’re at a conference. The panels and keynotes and forums have broken up, and you head off to get a drink with a handful of attendees. Are you on the record?

Suki Kim, a New York Times best-selling author, found herself in such a situation when she attended a book festival in Brisbane, Australia, over the weekend. After listening to a controversial keynote address on racial and cultural identity, Kim and a few other authors retreated to a small room in the hotel for what was billed by the conference hosts as an “artist-only” private conversation over cocktails.

But four days later, Kim found herself quoted in The New York Times, in a piece in which she criticized another prominent author by name, lamenting that his and other books by white males on topics similar to her book’s tended to be better received. Kim was outraged, and still is, that the Times reporter Rod Nordland, who she acknowledges speaking with at the event, would quote her for an article. Nordland is the Times Kabul bureau chief and is himself a recent author of a book on Afghanistan. That’s the basis on which he was invited to the book festival, and to the smaller reception: he wrote a book.

Kim says she knew Nordland was a journalist (she considers herself a journalist as well) but she says she had no idea they were having an on-the-record conversation for a story. They were at a book festival, after all, one exclusively for authors, and Nordland never mentioned he planned to write an article for The Times.