Overview
A highly motivated and seasoned publicist with over 20 years of extensive experience, I was recently a Director of Communications for Penguin Random House. Formerly the Director of Publicity for Miramax Books, I have worked in-house at HarperCollins, Henry Holt, and Overlook Press. Since branching out on my own a decade ago, I have handled a vast portfolio of client projects ranging from book publishing (Street Noise Books, Simon and Schuster, Blast Books) to the arts (BAM, The Onassis Foundation, This American Life) and non-profit (Heifer International, Aids Healthcare Foundation, Tiger Woods Foundation) to tech (Audible, On Story podcast, Serial).
I enjoy working closely with my clients as well as their agents, publishers and in-house marketing and publicity teams in order to optimize earned coverage and results. I offer full publicity services which encompass everything from messaging (i.e., press release, pitch letter, author Q&A) and press strategy (brainstorming pitch handles, timeline creation, identifying trend and current event tie-ins) to media outreach and the planning of relevant book events and exploring potential partnerships. I strongly feel that a good marketing and publicity campaign requires a team effort in which the author plays a vital role. I like to work for clients who are willing to actively participate in their book campaigns and who are also realistic about managing their expectations. For example, if an author expects to be on a national morning show program or wants their book to be made into a movie, I will not be able to meet those expectations if that person is a first-time author without a strong platform. It's important to find, identify, or target a book's audience through key assets: social media, websites, and other tools that can help to create a foundation through which to better target a book's audience.
I’ve learned what it takes to hit the campaign ground running and strive toward success and therefore make a concerted effort to work solely with clients and on campaigns whose work, content and stories inspire my own.
Services
Non-Fiction
Fiction
Certifications
- New York Foundation of the Arts (NYFA) guest lecturer
- NYU Masters in Publishing guest lecturer
- New School guest lecturer
Work experience
Penguin Random House
Penguin Random House Canada is the country’s largest book publisher and is part of Penguin Random House, the world's largest trade book publisher. Some of their celebrated and widely known imprints include Anchor Canada, Doubleday Canada, Knopf Canada, McClelland & Stewart, Penguin Canada, Penguin Teen, Random House Canada, Viking Canada, and Vintage Canada.
They publish over 500 new original titles per year in the North American market and distribute another 10,000 titles in Canada on behalf of Penguin Random House publishers in the U.S. and the U.K. and many clients. Headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, with office locations in Mississauga, Ontario, and Vancouver, British Columbia, Penguin Random House Canada is the literary home of world-renowned Canadian authors such as Margaret Atwood, Leonard Cohen, Kim Thúy, Alice Munro, Michael Ondaatje, David Chariandy, Dionne Brand, Richard Wagamese, and Chris Hadfield.
Self-employed
* Communications Strategist and Publicist for This American Life and the launch of its podcasts Serial and S-Town.
*Communications Consultant for the Ford Foundation and the regional screenings tour of HBO's Gideon's Army, a documentary which follows three public defenders working to give their clients the best representation while juggling hundreds of cases for little compensation.
*Press liaison for the annual PEN World Voices, 2010-present. PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect the freedom to write in the United States and worldwide.
*Hired to consult BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) regarding various campaigns including their 150th anniversary and The Next Wave Festival.
*Media consultant and Festival Publicist for the Onassis Foundation. Launched Narcissus Now, an inaugural 4-day festival of ideas + culture in the Fall of 2015 and last Spring's Gods and Mortals at Olympus: Ancient Dion, City of Zeus season. Help to manage the client's partnerships with BAM, Carnegie Hall, the New York Review of Books, The New York Public Library, the Museum of the Moving Image, among others.
*Freelance Publicist for Planned Parenthood's 2017 launch of #IDEFY, a five-year effort to identify, train, and
mobilize young people to bring them into the Planned Parenthood family for affordable high quality health care, comprehensive sex education, and a lifetime of activism.
*Publicity Consultant for the Nation Institute's Ridenhour Prizes at National Press Club, DC (2009-10).
*Communications Consultant for Heifer International.
*Freelance Publicist for The Authors Guild Foundation. Press liaison for six successful annual black-tie benefits (i.e., May 2010 benefit at the Metropolitan Club which honored the work of New Yorker editor David Remnick, hosted by Garrison Keillor).
*Hired by the Museum of the City of New York and Phaidon Press to launch the 9/11 anniversary publication
Aftermath: The World Trade Center Archive. This campaign entailed a 20-city tour and launch event at the New
York Public Library.
Miramax Books, Penguin Putnam, Henry Holt, Harper Collins
MIRAMAX BOOKS
Publicity Director who oversaw a staff of four. Oversaw budgets, marketing plans and presented titles at sales
conference. Drafted new acquisition memos, oversaw all press materials, and placed key column items.
Planned and executed over forty campaigns per year, event planning, scouting potential new projects, representing Miramax at appropriate functions and national media outreach. Coordinated high-profile book parties with Vanity Fair, Variety, Vogue, AMC, Daily News and Rolling Stone at high-end venues, i.e., Bungalow 8, Four Seasons, Lotus, Cipriani, and Le Cirque. Orchestrated and hosted various cross-pollinated events with Paramount, Disney, Hyperion for Kids, Variety, AMC and Food Network. Achieved five #1 New York Times bestsellers (Rudolph Giuliani's Leadership, Michael Chabon's Summerland, Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident, Queen Noor's Leap of Faith and Tim Russert's Big Russ & Me) and twelve additional New York Times bestsellers (including titles by Arianna Huffington, Plum Sykes, Chris Rice, Felix
Dennis and Peter Bart).
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PENGUIN PUTNAM
Publicity Director of Penguin Putnam's Overlook Press imprint.
Oversaw publicity and marketing for a catalogue of 65+ books per year including literary fiction, history, biography, pop culture, film, and art books. Increased visibility of imprint through the launch of area ding series, literary salons and orchestrated several press luncheons. Developed partnerships with high-profile organizations, i.e., BBC and New Yorker to launch new titles.
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HENRY HOLT
Senior Publicist
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HARPER COLLINS
Publicist
Audible
Strategized the launch of select podcast campaigns. Audible is a seller and producer of spoken audio entertainment, information, and educational programming on the Internet. Audible sells digital audiobooks, radio and TV programs, and audio versions of magazines and newspapers. Through its production arm, Audible Studios, Audible has also become the world's largest producer of downloadable audiobooks.
Projects
Five Decembers
“Hard-as-nails mystery/suspense/noir set against a backdrop of war in the Pacific. One hell of a good story.” – Stephen King
“War, imprisonment, torture, romance…The novel has an almost operatic symmetry, and Kestrel turns a beautiful phrase.” –The New York Times, Best Mystery Novels of 2021
“Lyrical, violent, intelligent, breathtaking: this is an unforgettable book.” – Wall Street Journal
"A gripping, resonant neo-noir odyssey" -New York Magazine
"A great blend of crime, war, and history" -The New York Post
Book Description:
Five Decembers is a gripping thriller, a staggering portrait of war, and a heartbreaking love story, as unforgettable as All the Light We Cannot See.
December 1941. America teeters on the brink of war, and in Honolulu, Hawaii, police detective Joe McGrady is assigned to investigate a homicide that will change his life forever. Because the trail of murder he uncovers will lead him across the Pacific, far from home and the woman he loves; and though the U.S. doesn’t know it yet, a Japanese fleet is already steaming toward Pearl Harbor.
This extraordinary novel is so much more than just a gripping crime story—it’s a story of survival against all odds, of love and loss and the human cost of war. Spanning the entirety of World War II, FIVE DECEMBERS is a beautiful, masterful, powerful novel that will live in your memory forever.
Serial (This American Life)
Serial is an investigative journalism podcast hosted by Sarah Koenig, narrating a nonfiction story over multiple episodes. The series was co-created and is co-produced by Koenig and Julie Snyder and developed by This American Life. Season one investigated the 1999 murder of Hae Min Lee, an 18-year-old student at Woodlawn High School in Baltimore. Season two focused on Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, an American Army soldier who was held for five years by the Taliban, and then charged with desertion. Season three, which debuted in September 2018, explores cases within the Justice Center Complex in the Cleveland area. Serial ranked number one on iTunes even before its debut and remained there for several weeks. Serial won a Peabody Award in April 2015 for its innovative telling of a long-form nonfiction story. As of September 2018, episodes of seasons one and two have been downloaded over 340 million times, establishing an ongoing podcast world record.
Uneasy by Chris Buck
Uneasy is a book of Chris Buck’s portraits of the famous from 1986 to 2016. For three decades Buck has been carving out a unique space in the world of celebrity portraiture, capturing its ineffability - its danger, its oddness, its warped sense of reality.
White Fur by Jardine LiBaire
A stunning star-crossed love story set against the glitz and grit of 1980s New York City.
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PRAISE FOR WHITE FUR
“A fairy tale of love and class and money and death and New York City in the 1980's, as seen through eyes so new and so young that everything seems like magic all the time…What holds it together is ferocity — Libaire's elegant, incongruous, glitz-and-trash command of the language of youth and young love, and the uncompromising fire of her main characters as they drift and dash from page to page.”—NPR
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“Two barely-20-somethings from opposite sides of the tracks fall in frantic love amid the lush grit of New York City in the 1980s…The real strength of the novel is its Technicolor atmosphere: Libaire’s New York is a glittering whirlwind, raw and sweaty and intoxicating. A page-turning whirlwind steeped in pain and hope.” —Kirkus Reviews
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Writing with all the senses, Libaire demonstrates an ability to evoke vivid moods and places, drawing a stark and realistic depiction of ’80s Manhattan. She also succeeds at giving equal weight and attention to both her protagonists, elegantly toggling between their perspectives. The most lively, memorable, and convincing character in the novel is the setting itself. —Publishers Weekly
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“[The] setting is viscerally exposed and uniquely gritty, and Libaire’s meaty, brazen, Ferrari-fast sentences prop it up well.” —Booklist
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A sexy, literary love story...White Fur would merely be an excellent exploration of the power dynamic between two lovers if the prose weren't so evocative and the sex scenes so torrid. —Maris Kreizman, Vulture (New York Magazine)
The Butterfly Effect by Jon Ronson
Join bestselling author Jon Ronson as he traces an intriguing butterfly effect. Many years ago, a teenager in Brussels had an idea – make porn free and easy to stream online. The consequences of that idea are surprising, delightful, and sad. They reach into areas of life no one could have expected. In this series’ first episode, meet Fabian Thylmann – that teen from Brussels.
Street Noise Books
Hired to oversee the publicity and marketing for the launch of a new publishing company, Street Noise Books. An independent publishing company of nonfiction for young adults, with a focus on heavily illustrated, and graphic novel nonfiction will launch in the Spring of 2020. Street Noise Books will publish 6 titles in the first year, and then will publish 6-8 titles per year for the first few years. Its books will have a radical, intersectional feminist, queer, and inclusive vision, and seek to provide a platform for the voices of marginalized people. Employing the traditional publishing model and open to unagented submissions, Street Noise Books sees its role as discovering and publishing books that are best described by the company’s tag line, “unapologetic, authentic, and politically relevant”.
Portfolio
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