F117.
Revise & Refine: Creating an Inclusive Writing Industry from the Top Down
Friday, March 25, 2022
9:00 am to 10:15 am
In response to the Black Lives Matter protests and #publishingpaidme, many organizations promised to do better, but what does doing better look like? This panel includes book and magazine editors, a multicultural marketer, a bookshop owner, and an editorial director who will discuss the actionable steps they’ve taken to rebuild the industry. They will also explain how to tap into a broad range of storytelling traditions within our country's growing multicultural communities.
Participants
Susette Brooks is an essayist with an MFA in nonfiction from Goucher College. She is also the director of multicultural marketing for Penguin Publishing Group, a public affairs officer in the New Jersey Army National Guard, and a board member at Philadelphia Stories.
Danielle A. Jackson is a Memphis-born writer and the first African American editor in chief of Oxford American magazine. An MFA student in UGA's narrative nonfiction program, she has had writing appear in the New York Times Book Review, Vulture, the Criterion Collection, and other venues.
Merry Sun is an editor at Portfolio, an imprint of Penguin Random House, which she joined in in 2015. She acquires and edits nonfiction books by inspiring experts, journalists, academics, entrepreneurs, and advocates in the worlds of business, technology, economics, and finance.
Jeannine A. Cook is a writer, educator, and curator. She is the shopkeeper at Harriett’s Bookshop in Philadelphia and Ida’s Bookshop in Collingswood, New Jersey.
Maggie Messitt is author of The Rainy Season, longlisted for the 2016 Alan Paton Award. Formerly the executive director of a nonprofit media organization in South Africa and founding national director of Report for America, she is now the Eberly Professor of Practice at Pennsylvania State and faculty in the Goucher MFA program.
