In more than twenty years in the book publishing industry, I have developed specialties in biography, creative nonfiction, literary fiction, poetry, women’s history, and twentieth-century literary studies. My award-winning acquisitions include such books as Most American: Notes from a Wounded Place by Rilla Askew, Transnational Frontiers: The American West in France by Emily C. Burns, House Built on Ashes: A Memoir by José Antonio Rodríguez, and Colonial Intimacies: Interethnic Kinship, Sexuality, and Marriage in Southern California, 1769-1885 by Erika Pérez.
As a university press acquisitions editor, I became adept at complex project management for time-sensitive and event-driven publications, most notably museum exhibition catalogs and university publications. According to each project’s needs, I wrote and edited marketing copy, evaluated manuscripts and proposals, and developmentally edited more than 150 books. As an interdepartmental team, my colleagues and I approached each project from a macro-level sense of vision, mission, and stakeholders’ expectations and a micro-level understanding of accelerated publication schedules and financial requirements.
Through my work applying for grants and publication subsidies, my acquisitions were awarded various grants, including the Terra Foundation for American Art International Publication grant through the College Art Association.
Gray Bevins Editorial 