Shelley Diaz: How I Got into Publishing
I decided I wanted to work in children’s publishing in sixth grade. I had devoured all of the Anne of Green Gables books by this time, and I was convinced that I could be the Dominican Lucy Maud Montgomery. I kept writing through middle school and high school, and pondered over different career paths (should I be a literary agent, an editor?), and even momentarily thought about being a cultural anthropologist instead.
The fact remained: I was fascinated by stories—all people’s stories.
I declared my English Lit/Latino Studies double-major freshman year at Columbia University, and was lucky enough to snag an editorial internship with Dell Publishing (a crossword puzzle publisher) through my Hispanic Scholarship Fund mentor. That summer internship cemented my desire to work in publishing, while at the same time reinforced the fact that it had to be with work that I cared about (crossword puzzles, were just not that interesting), and at a place that gave me the opportunity to advocate for diverse literature.
