The Business of Publishing: Panel with Industry Experts from Penguin, Dancing Cat Books and Fitzhenry and Whiteside
Join us for a fascinating talk with editors
Barry Jowett (Cormorant Books), Lynne Missen (Penguin Books) and Christie Harkin (Fitzhenry and Whiteside) as they discuss the changing market for kids books, what they look for in a new manuscript and how they work with writers and illustrators.
Lynne Missen joined Penguin Canada as Publishing Director, Young Readers Group, in 2011; previously she was Executive Editor, Children’s Books at HarperCollinsCanada. She has been editing books for over twenty years, children’s books in particular for the past fifteen. She has worked with bestselling and critically acclaimed authors from Canada and around the world, such as Kenneth Oppel, Kit Pearson, Helen Dunmore, John Marsden, and Lemony Snicket, and she has recently acquired works from Giller Prize–winning authors Joseph Boyden and Johanna Skibsrud, as well as internationally bestselling author Sandra Gulland. Authors on her list have won numerous awards, including the Governor General’s Award for Children’s Fiction and the TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award, among others, and many children’s choice awards. Lynne has been nominated for the CBA Libris Awards Editor of the Year Award four times in the past six years, most recently in May 2012.
Christie Harkin is the children’s book publisher and editor at Fitzhenry and Whiteside. She holds an Honours B.A. with a Specialist in English from the University of Toronto, and studied publishing at Ryerson University. Before beginning her career in publishing, Christie was a teacher and private English tutor, a homeschooling mom, and a children’s book reviewer on a local cable access television program. She boasts an enormous collection of children’s books, many of which are holdovers from her own childhood. Her focus as an editor and a publisher is to work cooperatively with authors and illustrators to create a wide variety books that appeal to children, parents and educators. Christie is married to a writer and has three teenagers - two of whom love to write. The other one is studying to become an advertising account-man. At least one family member will make enough money to support everybody else.
Barry Jowett has acquired and edited fiction and non-fiction for adults and young readers since 1996. In 2001, he spearheaded the growth of the young readers imprint at Dundurn Press, and grew that list for several years. In 2009 he joined Cormorant Books, working with the Dancing Cat Books imprint, becoming publisher in 2011. DCB has since received numerous award wins and nominations and has developed a strong reputation for top quality books.
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