News
14 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ■ JANUARY 26, 2015
publishing. Sternlight began organizing
other now-independent veteran editors
around 2009, leading to the founding of
5E, a collaboration among a number of
former big-time publishing veterans,
around 2011. 5E members include longtime DC/Vertigo editor Joan Hilty (more
on her to come), former Houghton
Mifflin executive editor Jane Roseman,
and former Henry Holt editor-in-chief
Majorie Braman. Mulcahy calls 5E a
“united front,” and the group publishes
a newsletter and meets once a month to
network and support one another.
Among the books produced by Brooklyn Books are Life from Scratch: A Memoir
of Food, Family and Forgiveness, by Sasha
Martin, and Making Masterpiece: 25 Years
Behind the Scenes at Masterpiece and Mystery!
At PBS, by Rebecca Eaton and Mulcahy.
Like other members of 5E, Mulcahy also
works through the Center for Fiction, a
nonprofit writers’ support center based in
midtown Manhattan, to mentor aspiring
writers and offer workshops.
Joan Hilty said she was “downsized” in
2010, after 15 years of editing all manner
of comics at DC Comics—from superhero titles and trading cards to more unconventional works, such as Neil
Gaiman’s Sandman series and G. Willow
Wilson’s Cairo graphic novel at DC’s Vertigo imprint. A cartoonist as well as an
editor, Hilty wrote and drew Bitter Girl,
a weekly comic on lesbian-dating high
jinks, distributed to the gay press through
the Q syndicate from 2001 to 2012.
“When I got downsized I decided I didn’t
want to go to another comics publisher, I
wanted to take my skills to the larger
world of book publishing,” she said.
Hilty, who is also a member of 5E,
teamed with Pete Friedrich, a cartoonist
and designer, in 2011 to launch Page-turner, a packaging house that develops
“comics projects outside of the comics
industry.” Pageturner develops projects
with and for a variety of institutions,
among them the ACLU, which created a
comics series about the Bill of Rights.
“Now we’re getting lots of interest from
nonprofits and arts organizations,” she
said. Pageturner has worked on projects
President George Slowik Jr.
Publisher Cevin Bryerman
Editorial Director Jim Milliot
Reviews Director Louisa Ermelino
Children’s Book Editor Diane Roback
Managing Editor Daniel Berchenko
News Director Rachel Deahl
Senior News Editor Calvin Reid
News Editor Clare Swanson
Features Editor Carolyn Juris
Senior Editor Mark Rotella
Senior Reviews Editor Peter Cannon
Deputy Reviews Editor Gabe Habash
Reviews Editors Annie Coreno, Alex Crowley,
Rose Fox, Everett Jones, Marcia Z. Nelson
Children’s Reviews Editor John A. Sellers
Comics Reviews Editor Heidi MacDonald
PW Select Editor Adam Boretz
Senior Writer Andrew R. Albanese
Senior Bookselling Editor Judith Rosen
Senior Religion Editor Lynn Garrett
Associate Editor, Children’s Books Natasha Gilmore
Assistant Editor, Children’s Books Matia Burnett
Contributing Editors John F. Baker, Gwenda Bond,
Peter Brantley, Michael Coffey, Natalie Danford,
Dick Donahue, Lucinda Dyer, James Grimmel-
mann, Brian Kenney, Sally Lodge, Daisy Maryles,
Diane Patrick, Nancy Pearl, Karen Raugust, Sarah
J. Robbins, Sonia Jaffe Robbins, Sybil Steinberg,
Wendy Werris
Art Director Clive Chiu
Layout & Production Assistant Matthew White
Copy Editor Ivan Anderson
V-P, Business Development Carl Pritzkat
Executive Editor Jonathan Segura
Director, Digital Operations Craig Morgan Teicher
Director, Events & Community Engagement
Kat Meyer
Production/Manufacturing Publishing Experts
Circulation Director Next Steps Marketing
Web Engineering Mediapolis
IT Support Mark Johnson, ACS Int’l
V-P Operations Patrick Turner
Business Manager Esther Reid
Marketing/Licensing Director Christi Cassidy
Marketing Manager Bryan Kinney
Digital Media Coordinator Ryk Hsieh
Digital Production Assistant Seth Satterlee
Correspondents:
New England: Judith Rosen 617-876-2469
Midwest: Claire Kirch 218-310-1867
South: Paige Crutcher 615-319-1318
West Coast: Anisse Gross 415-321-9381
Canada: Leigh Anne Williams 416-652-9255
Asia: Teri Tan ( ttan@publishersweekly.com)
HOW TO REACH US
71 W. 23rd St., Suite 1608, New York, NY 10010
Phone: 212-377-5500; fax: 212-377-2733
Subscriptions: To subscribe, change an address,
report delivery problems, or inquire about back
issues, call 800-278-2991 or 818-487-2069, or
fax 818-487-4550.
To contact us, visit www.publishersweekly.com
Reprints & permissions: ccassidy@publishersweekly.com
ADVERTISING
Inquiries: Cevin Bryerman 212-377-5703
Tory Abel 760-701-2015
Ted Olczak 212-377-5709
Joseph Murray 212-377-5708
212-377-5703
with Chronicle Books and TBS/Turner
Networks. As a freelance contractor,
Hilty has worked with comics publishers
like Boom! and Dark Horse Comics, and
with Forbes magazine, which published
the Zen of Steve Jobs in 2011, a webcomic
and print graphic biography of Jobs that
examines his 30-year pupil-teacher rela-
tionship with a Zen Buddhist monk.
All three are doing well. Not having
to edit 25 books a year, Turner said of his
years in traditional publishing gave him
the “psychic space” to write—which he
said brings him new freelance opportuni-
ties. Hilty said, “Working in comics pre-
pared me for the slippery world of trans-
media projects,” noting that “comics
train you to think cinematically,” and
that being both an editor and a visual
artist gives her an advantage. She’s
evolved from being a freelance “hired
hand,” called in to fix comics or graphic
novel projects gone bad, to “getting in-
volved earlier in the process and helping
to structure deals,” even doing “a little
agenting” when necessary. Best of all, she
said, her new post-corporate publishing
world “is full of young editors and young
agents who want to do comics.”
“Big projects get cancelled, and I’ve
got lots of new projects that haven’t been
signed yet,” Mulcahy said. “You need to
keep a lot of balls in the air, and you need
to be flexible.” —Calvin Reid
Editor’s note: Throughout the year,
PW will profile industry veterans
who have reinvented themselves,
either in book publishing or in new
fields.
