当她成为执行编辑时 水手的书, Rakia Clark had witnessed two decades of evolution in the book publishing industry. The consolidation and merging of publishing houses, combined with Amazon’s interruption of traditional bookselling methods and tech advances that enabled new platforms for consuming literature, has left the industry looking less and less like the one the 欧洲杯买球怎么投注 英语 梅杰在2001年毕业后进入公司.

Clark launched her book-publishing career with a Columbia University course and steadily rose through the editorial ranks at major publishers such as HarperCollins, 企鹅, 肯辛顿, and Beacon before taking her current post last fall. 在, she has put the spotlight on marginalized voices and brought to print such acclaimed works as Mona Eltahawy’s bold feminist manifesto 女人和女孩的七宗罪 and poet and screenwriter Brian Broome’s Kirkus Prize-winning 《把我打到上帝面前:回忆录, his powerful account of coming of age as a gay Black man.

Sameer Rao ’11 spoke to Clark about her long career in publishing and the industry changes she’s witnessed.

When did you decide you wanted to work in publishing?
I was pre-med the first three years at 欧洲杯买球怎么投注, 到大四的9月, I knew I didn’t want to apply to medical school. 我去了 职业发展办事处, and [then-Director] Liza Jane Bernard listened to me speak uninterrupted for about 20 minutes about my quandary: what my path had been, what the expectations were from my family while going to an elite fancy school like 欧洲杯买球怎么投注, 我出身卑微. I knew how disappointing it would be for my parents to hear that I wasn’t going to medical school, 然后他们会问, “你打算怎么办??我没有答案.

丽莎问:“嗯，你对什么感兴趣??” And I said, “Ideas and books and culture,” and I was going on and on. A smile started to creep onto her face, and she said, “Oh, honey, you want to work in publishing!” She gave me the very broadest strokes of what it is, noted that a few 欧洲杯买球怎么投注 students were able to get jobs at publishers in New York, 并说, “纽约是你想去的地方.”

The cornerstone of the 英语 major is “Junior Seminar,我当时并不知道这一点, but I was honing all the muscles that I would use in this work. It’s the critical thinking, the writing, the engagement, and I loved it.

Given the increasing attention on how people of color experience the publishing industry, how has your own ability to enact change grown over time?
It’s evolved as I’ve gained expertise and developed my sense of self. Who you are at 22 is different than who you are 20-plus years later. You’ve experienced enough life to know you might as well do what you want to do, 运用你的专业知识, 对别人坦率地说出来. 我认为这个行业也在不断发展. 我所看到的很多都是进步, 或者出版商所犯的错误, kind of feel inevitable because publishing is part of American society. Everything the country is reckoning with, publishing is reckoning with alongside it.

I think that I was prepared for the shift that’s happening. My taste today is the taste that I had in 2001. 只是现在大家都听我的了, and part of that is because I stuck around and got better. But I am certain that there are people in and outside of the publishing industry who are like, “嗯, 她到底能有多好? 她被录用只是因为…….“但这不是一种新的感觉. I’ve been Black the whole time, so I don’t let that bother me. It’s just part of the fabric of my working life.

Which of the books you’ve brought to market stand out to you?
The first book I published at Beacon is about corporal punishment within the Black community: Spare the Kids: Why Whupping Children Won’t Save Black America. 作者，博士. 斯泰西巴顿, 是历史学家和儿童福利倡导者吗, and it’s probably one of the most important books I’ve ever published. People are very dismissive when it comes to parents’ right to be able to hit their children, and she just dismantles any argument you have.

Some people told me they didn’t finish the book because they didn’t want to change their minds, because it’s harder to parent in a way that’s different than how you were parented—and that also forces you to reckon with how you were parented. 那个对我来说很特别.

Do you foresee any future trends or changes on the horizon that will impact the industry?
多样性, 股本, and inclusion initiatives industry-wide [pushed publishers] to hire more people of color, and there’ve been some recent senior-level hires. People who were hired a year ago, their books are going to start getting published. 我很想知道这些是什么. 书籍是我们文化的重要组成部分, 所以出版的书, 即使它以一种微妙的方式发生, 影响我们的思维方式. It’s often a slower process, so the hires that are made can actually change culture over time.