Where are they now: Heidi Smith

Thu 5 Dec 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Heidi Smith, Where are they now?| Posted by: Gavin

I worked in the el-hi (elementary and secondary school) textbook publishing industry in Massachusetts for five years, managing projects for clients such as Houghton Mifflin, National Geographic, and McGraw-Hill. The book projects ranged from 2-4,000 pages, with teacher editions, student editions, and various grade levels and subjects. We produced print books, online materials, CDs, interactive lessons, magnets, and other ancillary materials.

My next move was to Washington, DC, to work as an editor in nonfiction business trade publishing. I worked closely with authors and designers, producing at least eight titles per year as the lead editor. The editing ranged from copyediting to developmental and structural editing, depending on the needs of the manuscripts and authors. I also edited and wrote marketing collateral to support the books and the organization, and supported other editors by proofreading their books.

After working in the busy world of publishing, I’m looking forward to the next opportunity. Although I enjoyed textbook and nonfiction business publishing, I’d like to expand and learn from other markets.

After some amazing vacations to the British Virgin Islands and Tanzania, Africa, I currently live in Northern California, where I’m taking a deep breath and focusing on my own writing once again. I’m reading some great books, and working on freelance opportunities.

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Heidi Smith volunteered for us back in the summer of 2006. Read more in the Where Are They Now series.

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Where are they now: Katharine Duckett

Tue 5 Nov 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Katharine Duckett, Where are they now?| Posted by: Gavin

In the years since reading slush and mastering the art of all-day tea drinking as a Small Beer Press intern, I’ve spent two years in Kazakhstan, two years in New York City, and a handful of months in climes between. It turns out that if you want to break into publishing, you should move to Central Asia, drink lots of vodka, and learn valuable, hands-on life skills, like how to rescue a dog from a trash pit using only an old door and a curtain. (You never know when you’ll need to whip that one out at a job interview.) Then move to New York and start eavesdropping on well-respected authors at readings, which, if done correctly, will turn out to be more charming than creepy when they offer youa job as their assistant. That’s how I ended up handling publicity for the lovely duo of Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman, and eventually segued into my current position coordinating book and author coverage for Tor.com, the rocket ship division of Macmillan Publishers.

These days I’m engaged to a recent Oxford grad; we’re taking Spanish classes in preparation for our Costa Rican honeymoon and painting our new Brooklyn living room a cozy shade of “yam.” Around New York City, I write and read stories, perform in the occasional theater piece, and relive the glory of my post-Soviet days with trips to Brighton Beach and experimentation with borscht and dolma recipes.

Read more in the Where Are They Now series.

Photos (“Coney Island” and “Hyde Park”) courtesy Laura Lamb.

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Where are they now: Felice Ling

Tue 29 Oct 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Felice Ling, Where are they now?| Posted by: Gavin

After graduation, I started teaching first-grade at a charter school in Memphis, Tennessee. That was a bit of a struggle… As a result of the school’s financial problems, I only actually taught there for about half a year. The second half of that year, I took my magic, turned it into a street show, and brought it out onto the streets of Memphis. (I didn’t quite join a circus—though I did befriend a clown—but it was a lot of fun). On a similar vein, I used that experience (more recently) to write an article for Genii, an international magic magazine for magicians, titled “Women Street Performers: We Know Who We Are In.” That article is currently in review.

From Memphis, I flew all the way to Baoding, China (just south of Beijing) to teach English at a university. I was there for two years, traveling, teaching, and learning. In China, I quickly picked up on the presence of park performers: dancers, musicians, tai chi practitioners, Chinese yoyo enthusiasts, and—once—I even witnessed a group of five men tossing heavy sandbags among themselves.

So now I’m at the University of Chicago, working towards my Masters in Social Sciences, mainly because I am extremely curious about the lives of street performers in the US and in China. I’m not sure yet what I’ll be doing next – but I guess that’s what your 20’s are all about. I’m still writing (always) and still performing magic (always, as well). I’ve even started learning how to cook (or attempting to) so that I don’t have to eat sandwiches everyday. That’s actually what I miss most about SBP—lunches together and the tales we told while huddled over Easthampton cuisine.

 

Photo credits:
“Magic” (Felice Ling performing at the First Annual Shelby Forest Spring Fest) by KimbaWayne Photography.
“Street Food Stands,” Felice Ling, Baoding, China.

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Read more in the Where Are They Now series.

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Where are they now: Michael J. DeLuca

Tue 20 Aug 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Michael J DeLuca, Where are they now?| Posted by: Gavin

My archery skills have severely deteriorated. I no longer get paper cuts. I haven’t mistakenly spent too much money mailing anything to Germany in quite some time. The mail room employees at the Easthampton post office have very likely forgotten what I look like.

I moved away from Western Mass, first to Boston, then Detroit, where I meet fewer pagans on a daily basis and not everyone agrees with my politics. I own a house now (real estate: significantly cheaper outside the Valley) and have begun accumulating books once again after a long stretch of itinerant downsizing, but despair at ever getting my house to the enviable state of the Small Beer office in 2005, where one expected any day to die of internal injuries following a tragic book cave-in.

I still write (I will always write) but am less afraid of writers. I still listen to and enjoy indie chamber-pop, but less of it. It has been years since I’ve opened a piece of mail with a tiny cutlass. Through a great stroke of luck and generosity, I once again on occasion get to look at a medicinal mushrooms poster. I still eat wild mushrooms procured from local woods and have not yet died of it. I still drink lots of quite good tea, but eat slightly less amazing chocolate. I ride 100% fewer freight elevators and no longer have much use for a pallet jack.

Otherwise, life remains much the same.

Michael J. DeLuca lives in Michigan. His short stories have been published in Urban Green Man, Abyss & Apex, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies, among others.

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Where are they now: Christian N. Desrosiers

Tue 30 Jul 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Christian Desrosiers, Where are they now?| Posted by: Gavin

I’ve been all over the place, both geographically and career-wise—I’ll do my best to be concise and still interesting. I interned at SBP during my junior year at Amherst College. At the time, I was an English major who was solely interested in literature and making a career in literature. I went on from SBP to a summer internship at the Hudson Review and, in my senior year, I wrote a literary-historical thesis on poverty in Appalachia and applied for a Fulbright scholarship to Indonesia.

My time in Indonesia taught me a lot about myself and my interests. I wrote and published a few pieces in the Hudson Review and other publications—a major coup after a seemingly endless stream of thanks-but-no-thanks emails from journals—but also grew more interested in social justice causes. Writing took too much of my time and what I ended up with seemed like too little to justify all those hours spent writing alone and in a constant state of frustration. I traveled a bit in Southeast Asia—Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Myanmar—and subsequently found a job with an educational non-profit in Somaliland, the autonomous region in northwest Somalia. After working there for a year, I started two companies in Somaliland: a logistics company for the fisheries sector (which barely got off the ground) and a renewable energy development firm (still making headway, follow us at www.qoraxenergy.com).

After making some inroads, I’ve left most of the daily operations of Qorax Energy to my co-founders as I prepare to start a master’s program at MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning. A long way from what I envisioned my future only three years previous as an undergraduate. We’ll see where life takes me next . . .

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Where are they now: Sara Majka

Mon 22 Jul 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Sara Majka, Where are they now?| Posted by: Gavin

Let’s see . . . after my time with Small Beer Press I spent seven months living in Provincetown as a fiction fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center.  From there I moved back to Northampton, MA to start at the University of Massachusetts MFA program.  I graduated from UMass a semester early because I couldn’t wait to move to New York City. That enthusiasm seems funny to me now, but here I am, living in Brooklyn, temping for the summer, saving money before starting the life of an adjunct in the fall. It’s hot here; the subway is unbelievably crowded on my morning commute. I finished a collection of short stories that I’m starting to shop around. I was lucky to be able to go on a lot of trips over the past few years—to Poland, Berlin, cross country by train, small mid-western cities by bus. I’ve begun to think, though, that a more established daily routine would be helpful.

When I volunteered with Small Beer, I think I was testing out publishing work as a potential future, but life seems to have funneled me towards teaching. Still, it was a good time to form relationships that I’m glad to have. It was also good to learn what the slush pile is like, what goes into making a book, and to get an intimate look at a press that’s there to publish books that otherwise might go unpublished.

Sara Majka lives in Brooklyn, NY. Her short stories have been published in The Gettysburg Review, Massachusetts Review, and A Public Space, among others. 

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Where are they now?

Fri 19 Jul 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., volunteers, Where are they now?| Posted by: Gavin

I thought it would be interesting to see where some of our once-were-interns or volunteers are these days so a couple of weeks ago I emailed some of them to ask if they wouldn’t mind updating us on where they’ve been and where they are now.

In part it was curiosity since some of these people really helped out at various times: it’s no fun to mail the zine by myself, it’s much better with company! But I also thought it might be interesting to readers and students and anyone who is interested in working in publishing. The path to (or through) publishing is not simple nor singular, there are an infinite number of ways people enter, enjoy, live, and leave the field.

I’ll post the first one, from Sara Majka, on Monday, and then will post more as and when they come in. With luck we’ll do this again every seven years . . . well, maybe every now and then.

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