Rachel Noorda, Director of Book Publishing (She/Her)
Rachel Noorda is Director of Book Publishing and Assistant Professor of English at Portland State University. Dr. Noorda works closely with publishing industry organizations: she is on the board of PubWest and Chair of the Immersive Media & Reading 2020 Research Committee in partnership with Panorama Project. In both her scholarly work and offering opportunities to graduate students, Dr. Noorda is committed to and interested in transnational book industry perspectives. To this end, she works with wonderful scholars in the UK, Australia, Canada, Ghana, China, South Africa, and India on Border-Crossing Books and a transnational publishing network. Dr. Noorda is also an advocate of international experiences for the graduate students through study abroad and international exchange opportunities as well as international guest speakers and class topics. Dr. Noorda is a researcher of twenty-first century book studies, particularly on topics of entrepreneurship, marketing, small business, national identity, and international publishing. With this expertise, she is a series editor for Cambridge University Press, editorial board member of Publishing Research Quarterly, and a peer reviewer for Convergence and National Identities.
Courses: Introduction to Book Publishing, Book Publishing for Writers, Book Editing, Book Marketing, Researching Book Publishing
Kathi Inman Berens (She/Her)
Kathi Inman Berens, Associate Professor, advises Ooligan Press and teaches classes in PSU’s graduate program in Book Publishing and in the English department's Literature program. Short-listed for the 2020 Hayles Prize in Criticism by the Electronic Literature Organization, and winner of the 2014–15 U.S. Fulbright in Digital Culture for yearlong residence in Norway, Dr. Berens performs research that helps Book Publishing Master's students identify new storytelling practices across media: from data poetry, virtual and mixed reality, and Big 5 Publishing, to interactive fiction, small press publishing, and fanfic. Dr. Berens' scholarship has been published by Oxford University Press, the University of Minnesota Press (in the Debates in Digital Humanities series), the Modern Languages Association, the L.A. Review of Books, and many other venues. While a research fellow at the University of Southern California, where she was faculty 2000-2014, Dr. Berens was Principal Investigator of IBM-funded research about how teleconferencing software changes what and how we learn in university classrooms--nearly a decade before COVID made such practices standard. Her experiments in digital pedagogy impelled her to write several articles about digital teaching-and-learning best practices, and have won university teaching prizes at PSU (2020) and USC (2006-09).
Courses: Digital Skills, Research in Book Publishing, Videogames and Electronic Literature, Book Publishing for Writers, Technologies of Text, Digital Literary Studies, Popular Authoring and Internet Culture
Robyn Crummer-Olson (She/Her)
Robyn is the Publisher of Ooligan Press and oversees its operations, in addition to mentoring students and teaching publishing courses. She has spent more than twelve years as a marketer in freelance, agency, and client-side roles. As a freelancer, she has worked with authors on platform-building and book marketing for the past three years. In her agency roles, she has worked as a content strategist, marketing copywriter, and copyeditor for brand accounts such as Condé Nast, Microsoft, and Wacom. And she was previously the Editorial Director and Marketing and Communications Manager for IT Revolution, overseeing the marketing and communication strategy for four books and three events a year. She earned a BA in Communication and Women's Studies from Southwestern University in 2001. She graduated in 2011 from Portland State University with an MA in Writing and Book Publishing. Since graduating, she has edited and marketed books about woodblock printing, Lady Gaga, IT, beer, and design thinking—just to name a few. Robyn enjoys knitting, canning, axe throwing, and hiking. She lives in SE Portland with her husband, Elliot, and daughter, Frances, and her two cats, Hank and Cloud. Courses: Publishing Studio, Publishing Lab, Book Marketing, Book Publishing for Writers
Courses: Publishing Studio, Publishing Lab, Book Marketing, Book Publishing for Writers
Kelley R. Dodd (She/Her)
Kelley R. Dodd teaches Book Design Software. She is a print specialist and freelance designer, having worked in the print and publishing industries for more than twenty years. Kelley is the graphic designer for the bimonthly magazine The Solutions Journal: For a Sustainable and Desirable Future and is working on the second book in the Cycling Sojourner series, Cycling Sojourner: A Guide to the Best Multi-day Tours in Washington. Her experience in graphic arts includes logo design, branding, product packaging, document design, and illustration. She received a Bachelor's degree in Advertising from the University of Texas at Austin and an Master's degree in Writing with a specialization in Book Publishing from Portland State University. During her graduate studies, Kelley designed various projects for Ooligan Press, including the interior and cover for Oregon at Work: 1859–2009, the covers for Classroom Publishing: A Practical Guide for Teachers, Killing George Washington: The American West in Five Voices, and Rethinking Paper and Ink: The Sustainable Publishing Revolution (1st edition) as well as the Open Book logo. Kelley has been interviewed on the Ooligan Press blog.
Courses: Book Design Software, Advanced Book Design
Desiree Wilson (They/She)
Desiree Wilson (they/she) is a Portland State alum with with a master's in book publishing and a post-baccalaureate in Comic Book Studies. While at Ooligan Press, they were an acquisitions editor and, after a professional break, ultimately worked alongside three separate acquisitions teams. She has worked in a variety of major publishing avenues, including work with Kickstarter, Dark Horse Comics, Catapult/Counterpoint/Soft Skull Press, and Oni Press. They currently work as a literary agent with The Bent Agency, where they specialize in working with narratives from BIPOC and other underrepresented voices for both prose and graphic novels.
Course: Introduction to Book Publishing
Stephanie Argy (She/Her)
Stephanie Argy is an associate editor at the International Society for Technology in Education. In addition to overseeing individual book projects at ISTE, she has helped spearhead new publishing endeavors, including ISTE’s first audiobooks. She earned a Master's degree from the graduate program in Book Publishing at Portland State University in 2018 and was the recipient of the Dennis Stovall First Edition Award, which recognizes the student who best exemplifies the program's mission. At Ooligan, Stephanie was the manager of the digital department and did early research into how the press could begin making audiobooks. Stephanie previously earned a Master's degree from the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University. She has worked as a journalist and a magazine editor, and she is an award-winning filmmaker whose movies have played all over the world. Through her new independent press, Particle + Wave Publishing, she recently edited, designed, and published the novel Speaker.
Course: Introduction to Book Publishing
John Henley (He/Him)
John Henley is a well-known bookseller in the Pacific Northwest. As one of the earliest managers at Powell’s Bookstore, he developed the new books department in the late 1970s. He was also in charge of the rare books department. He has hand-sold books, sold books through catalogues, and sold books online. He has experience in small publishing ventures and is a published author of a novel and articles on bibliography. He was the manager for the Great Northwest Bookstore from 1990 to 2009. He taught the Bookselling course from 2001 to 2010 and has been with the graduate program in Book Publishing from its inception. He now teaches an intensive survey course, The Popular Book in the United States, designed to sharpen the skills of acquisitions editors. John has studied this subject since getting into the book business in the late 1960s. He is an Accredited Senior Appraiser of Books and Manuscripts in the American Society of Appraisers.
Course: The Popular Book in the United States
Kerry Sparks (She/Her)
Kerry Sparks has been at Levine Greenberg Rostan Literary for over a decade. In her time there she has built up the kid’s lit department and the agency wide digital initiative. A few of her clients include NYT and International Bestselling author Jennifer Niven, National Book Award Finalist Carrie Arcos, bestselling author Susan Wittig Albert, illustrator and author Mark Pett, novelist Camille Perri, and a robust list of Jennifers—Jenny Torres Sanchez, Jennifer Mathieu, Jenny Lundquist, Jennifer Mann, and Jennifer Gray Olson to name a few. She is looking for fiction that is the perfect combination of a great hook and solid writing, whether for adults or younger readers. Kerry grew up in rural Oregon town before heading to California for college. She graduated with honors from California State University, Los Angeles with a degree in English, where she also published short stories and wrote and produced plays. After a decade in Manhattan, Kerry now heads up the LGR Oregon outpost in Portland where she lives with her husband and two young daughters. Kerry is the co-author of the hipster baby name book Hello, My Name Is Pabst and will gladly help clients name their characters when necessary.
Course: Literary Agents and Acquisitions
Corinne Gould (She/Her)
The opportunities to blend creativity and analytical thinking always bring Corinne Gould (she/her) back to marketing. In her first industry job, Corinne developed and managed the clarified title management workflow for metadata and influencer marketing strategy for Timber Press. She now leverages her equity lens, marketing acumen, and curiosity as the recruitment marketing manager at Portland State's School of Business, specializing in paid content marketing and storytelling. Corinne came to Portland and the master's in book publishing at Portland State in 2014 to fuse her pragmatic business background and passion for literature and critical theory. While at Ooligan Press, Corinne served as project manager for Untangling the Knot, The Ghosts Who Travel With Us, and Siblings and Other Disappointments. She also worked as a graduate assistant, planning and executing Transmit Culture events that centered innovation and racial and gender equity. Along with Dory Athey, Corinne supported the development and launch of the Oregon Writers of Color Showcase in collaboration with Literary Arts. She has also worked, volunteered, and interned across functional areas with HarperCollins Publishers, ISTE, Hawthorne Books, Late Night Library, The Masters Review, Pathos Literary Magazine, Allport Editions, and more.
Course: Book Marketing
Sarah Currin (They/Them)
Sarah is an editor and freelance publishing professional who is honored to work in Portland, Oregon, on the traditional lands of the Multnomah, Kathlamet, Clackamas, Cowlitz bands of Chinook, Tualatin Kalapuya, Molalla, and many other tribes living along the Columbia River. A technical editor by trade, Sarah is a graduate of Portland State University with their master’s degree in writing and book publishing. They were the editorial manager for Ooligan Press, as well as the co-manager of Write to Publish and the 2014 winner of the Dennis Stovall First Edition Award. Sarah is also a collaborative editor for Indigo: Editing, Design, and More and has had the pleasure of being the publisher’s assistant at Timber Press and a bookseller at Powell’s City of Books. Additionally, they have worked at Hawthorne Books, Tin House magazine, and Sparkplug Comic Books. Their editing experience is broad and includes projects ranging from highly technical reports and papers, business- and IT-focused nonfiction, news articles, and blog posts to memoirs, thrillers, essay collections, and literary fiction. When they're not wordsmithing, they like to read comics, video chat with friends, and play music in their band.
Course: Book Editing
Matt Wise (He/Him)
Matt Wise has spent the past decade working with writers of all stripe: from Pulitzer winners to NY Times Bestsellers, journalists to novelists to screenwriters. After earning his MFA and running the literary journal Bombay Gin (founded by Allen Ginsberg), Wise started as a literary agent’s assistant then was promoted to agent after closing a mid-six-figure deal while still answering phones. After agenting for two years, Wise helped to found the book-to-film department at Foundry Literary + Media (Stronger, The Sisters Brothers), before being asked to manage Blumhouse Productions (Get Out, The Gift) literary imprint with Random House. Wise was then hired to build a publishing imprint of Adaptive Studios (Project Greenlight, Coin Heist) and expand their book-to-film IP slate. In just over two years, Wise published close to 40 books; the majority of them developed from concept all the way to bookshelf. In his career, Wise has acted as a publisher, editor, literary agent, film and television executive and sub-rights agent.
Course: Book Editing
Kent Watson (He/Him)
Kent Watson is a 30+ year publishing professional. He has worked for such notable companies as the Tattered Cover Bookstore, Ingram Periodicals, Houghton Mifflin, Timber Press, and is the former Executive Director of PubWest. Kent is an Adjunct Professor at Portland State University teaching the Business of Book Publishing, and a Publishing Consultant.
Course: The Business of Book Publishing
Brian Parker
Brian Parker is the current adjunct instructor for Children’s Book Publishing and has always been in love with storytelling in every medium. After earning a BFA in graphic design & illustration from Mississippi State University, he worked for over 15 years in music publishing, corporate marketing, sports/entertainment, and children’s publishing specializing in Alaskana. He earned his MA in writing & publishing from Portland State University where he worked in Ooligan Press on projects like The Ghosts Who Travel With Me and the Write to Publish author events. In 2015, Brian started an independent publishing company, Believe In Wonder, which he co-owns with his wife. They have published 15 five-star reviewed titles. He works closely with educational groups like Literary Arts, The Right Brain Initiative, The Independent Publishing Resource Center, and First Book with a mission to promote diversity and inclusion in youth fiction and to inspire creativity in a new generation of readers and storytellers.
Course: Children's Book Publishing
Michael Clark
Michael Clark is Associate Professor of English and the Coordinator for the Minor in Film Studies at PSU, while also serving as Director of the Portland Center for Public Humanities. His background is in twentieth-century literature, philosophy, and literary theory. He received his doctorate in comparative literature from the State University of New York, Binghamton. Michael Clark is also a lawyer, holding a J.D. from the University of Oregon, and specializes in intellectual property law.
Course: Intellectual Property and Copyright
Anna Noak
Anna Noak has been a book publishing generalist and editor for the last eleven years, working in an assortment of genres published by varying sized houses, ranging from a small, startup YA press to a Body, Mind, Spirit imprint of Simon & Schuster. She has primarily worked in-house and has a broad background as an acquisition editor, list manager, production editor, project manager, and, most currently, as the editorial director of IT Revolution, a small press specializing in business books. Her freelance work has primarily been as a ghostwriter and book doctor. She has a Master of Arts in Writing from Portland State University with a concentration in Publishing. She lives and works in Portland, Oregon.
Course: Introduction to Publishing
Abby Ranger
Abby Ranger is a former senior editor at HarperCollins, and the founder of Abby Ranger Editorial, LLC, a publishing and editorial consulting company that focuses on middle grade and young adult fiction. Abby's more than 14 years of experience in book publishing include editorial posts at Disney-Hyperion and Scholastic. She has edited novels by New York Times bestselling authors Cinda Williams Chima, Amie Kaufman, Linda Sue Park, and Victoria Schwab, among others.
Courses: Publishing for Young Adults, Developmental Editing
Pariah Burke (He/Him)
Pariah Burke (http://iampariah.com) is a digital publishing and graphic design consultant, trainer, author, and speaker whose passion is Inspiring, Informing, and Empowering Creative Professionals™. Pariah literally wrote the book (and the curriculum used by colleges, universities, and trainers the world over) on digital publishing with InDesign, ePublishing with InDesign. He also wrote the first book for experienced InDesign users, Mastering InDesign for Print Design and Production, as well as other books, more than 25 video training courses, and more than 450 published tutorials and articles on the topics of InDesign, InCopy, Acrobat, Photoshop, Illustrator, typography, elearning, epublishing, iPad DPS publishing, creative and office efficiency, the business of design, and going freelance. Pariah travels everywhere from his home base in Portland, Oregon, and you can always find him sharing with, and helping, the creative pro community on Twitter @iampariah.
Course: Ebook Design
Jessie Carver (She/Her)
Jessie Carver (she/her) is an editor and writer who received a master of arts in writing (with a concentration in editing and book publishing) from Portland State University in 2011. She works as the managing editor/writer at a language interpreting company and has edited many books and magazines, including Bitch magazine (2010–2019), What About the Rest of Your Life by Sung Yim (2018 Lambda Literary Award finalist), The End of My Career by Martha Grover (2016 Oregon Book Award finalist), and Life Begins at Incorporation by Pulitzer Prize finalist Matt Bors. When she’s not editing and writing for other people, Jessie stays busy hanging out with her dog, amassing too many books (is there such a thing?), teaching, and writing for herself. She co-authored the book Rethinking Paper & Ink: The Sustainable Publishing Revolution, and her fiction and poems have appeared in Hobart, Entropy, Barren, Watershed Review, and the anthology Love Is the Drug & Other Dark Poems.
Course: Copyediting
Laura Stanfill
Laura Stanfill is a freelance editor, publishing consultant, and small-press publisher. In 2012, she founded Forest Avenue Press, which is now distributed by Publishers Group West. After receiving a bachelor’s degree from Vassar College and the Jane Dealy Wirsig Prize in Journalism, she embarked on a decade-long career as a community newspaper reporter and editor, netting regional and national awards. In 2018, Laura earned a certificate from the Yale Publishing Course, after winning a scholarship from the Independent Book Publishers Association. Publishers Weekly named her a Star Watch Honoree in 2017. Forest Avenue titles have received national accolades and achieved regional indie bookstore best-seller status. Laura regularly appears as a guest lecturer at colleges, universities, writing festivals, and workshops to demystify the industry and teach essential skills to authors and new publishers. Recent appearances include the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association, the University of New Mexico, the Writers’ Workshoppe, Clackamas Community College, Washington State, Pacific University, and The Attic. As a volunteer, she mentors young writers, serves on a charter school board, and facilitates Create More, Fear Less, an anxiety-and-art project founded by Kathleen Lane to help middle-school students manage their worries. Laura is represented by Laurie Fox of the Linda Chester Literary Agency, and her creative work has appeared in or is forthcoming from The Rumpus, Longridge Review, Stonecoast Review, The Nasiona, Paragon Journal, Rosebud, and VoiceCatcher as well as the anthologies We Believe You, Christine (Wellstone Books) and The Untold Gaze (O’Donnell/Little).
Course: Book Editing
Dennis Stovall
Emeritus Faculty: Dennis Stovall founded the PSU publishing program in 2001. He has also worked as a publisher of Media Weavers and Blue Heron Publishing. Born in Portland and raised in The Dalles, Oregon, in 1968 he graduated from the University of Oregon Honors College in Political Science. His work as a sandhog, steelworker, teamster, heavy equipment operator, papermaker, and quality control engineer has informed his lifelong advocacy of labor, cultural, and social issues. He is the co-author of Classroom Publishing: A Practical Guide to Enhancing Student Literacy. He has served on the boards of the Pacific NW Writers Association, the Oregon Writers Colony, Northwest Association of Book Publishers, the Oregon Publishers Industry Alliance, as well as numerous other related organizations.