CPC: Week One

Checking in from the first week of the Columbia Publishing Course. First, let me say how incredibly tired I am! It’s the best kind of tired though. I love waking up in the morning and knowing that I’ll be able to eat and breathe publishing for the next twelve hours.

I can’t say enough about the people I’m meeting. They’re quickly turning into friends, and soon, I hope, they will become my colleagues. I also can’t believe the quality of the speakers that we are lucky enough to see on a daily basis. I don’t want to drop a ton of names, but they are the cliché-breaking best and brightest. I am routinely dazzled by their experience, their enthusiasm, and their obvious passion for their profession.

I’d be here forever if I rehashed everything I wanted to, but I’ll drop a few cookie crumbs:

---On the first day, I spied a girl with brilliant turquoise highlights. I ended up sitting next to her at the welcome BBQ, and of course, I complimented her hair. She said, “Oh, I modeled them after…” “…STEPHANIE PERKINS!?!” (The overenthusiastic one is me.) We were soon chatting about our mutual love of YA. (For those of you not up on your teen reads, Stephanie Perkins wrote the swoon-worthy Anna and the French Kiss, which I previously reviewed here.)

---I wrote a Summer Reading List for my friend Sam Coren at Student Advisor, and it went up on my second day here. I was so happy to do this for her, as she was one of the first people who told me to start a blog. SLB exists because she told me to write about what I love, so thanks, Sam!

---I have some breaking news! The dynamic and very funny Megan Tingley (Senior Vice President and Publisher of Little, Brown for Young Readers) came to speak to us about YA literature, which thrilled me to no end. (She is the editor who acquired the Twilight series. Can we say great instincts?) After her talk, she told me there would be a companion novel for Ship Breaker, which I reviewed last week and adored. Look for The Drowned Cities in May of 2012. (I just started Bacigalupi’s adult sci-fi The Windup Girl, so that might tide me over for a small while.)

---More news! I heard this tidbit from Nathan Englander’s editor (who’s also the Vice President and Senior Editor of Knopf). The incredibly warm and charming Jordan Pavlin let us know that Englander has a new set of short stories coming out. If you don’t know to be excited, you should be! His collection For the Relief of Unbearable Urges is nothing short of brilliant, and his novel The Ministry of Special Cases is a well-researched heartbreaker. He is one of my favorite adult authors writing now.

---What would a publishing course be without free books? Two of the novels I’m most stoked for are the buzzed-about Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor and the beautiful Ruben Toledo edition of Jane Eyre. I’ll let you know about the other ones as I work my way through them.

---I wrote a professional bio for the first time. Let me know what you think:

A fifth-generation Virginian, Amy Rosenbaum received her B.A. from Tufts University, where she majored in English and minored in Communications and Media Studies. Her senior project—an original episode of Grey’s Anatomy—was honored with a program-wide award. While at Tufts, Amy stage-managed the first licensed production of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog and interned at Walden Media, where she helped design a marketing plan for a middle grade murder mystery. Her newest project is “Simple Little Bookworm,” a review blog focused on the magic and mechanics of storytelling. Amy is currently pursuing a career in book publishing.

That last line just about says it all, no? Wish me luck!