Mary Bisbee-Beek has worked in publishing since 1979. She was the founder and director of Beeksbee Books, an independent publicity and marketing consulting office, from 1992-2003. In the spring of 2003, she joined the University of Michigan Press as the director of publicity and the trade marketing and foreign rights manager. Last July, she joined Literary Ventures Fund as director of publicity and foreign rights.
On my nightstand now:
Jim Harrison's The English Major, Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri and Finding Beauty in a Broken World by Terry Tempest Williams--all of these are for fun reading. For work, I've got a number of manuscripts and A Letter from Death by Lillian Moats.
Favorite book when you were a child:
Hard to pick just one but favorites that I still give as gifts include The House at Pooh Corner, Blueberries for Sal, A Wrinkle in Time, Harriet the Spy and all of the Ramona Quimby books!
Your top five authors:
Uh oh, there's that limit thing again. I've fidgeted with this question for weeks now and have decided to include the whole list: Richard Jones, Andrew Solomon, Ann Hood, Anne Tyler, Chris Bohjalian, Joe Coomer, Tim Farrington, Abigail Thomas, Sue Miller, Brad Kessler and Laurie Colwin.
Book you've faked reading:
Pride and Prejudice, and most textbooks that were ever assigned.
Book you're an evangelist for:
A Century of November by W. D. Wetherell.
Book you've bought for the cover:
I am happy to say that I've never fallen for this one.
Book that changed your life:
I have to say that there have been four books that have been pivotal to my work as a publicist, all of them demanded more than what might have been an initial expectation by their publisher but I was happy to work upwards of one or two years on each: A Stone Boat by Andrew Solomon, Spring Essence: The Poetry of Ho Xuan Huong, A Century of November by W. D. Wetherell and Monique and the Mango Rains by Kris Holloway.
Favorite line from a book:
"He judged men and he grew apples and it was a perilous autumn for both."--A Century of November by W. D. Wetherell.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner and almost anything by Laurie Colwin.
Publisher you think is consistently doing good work, from which you'd buy a book just because it was published by that house:
It would have to be Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. They consistently hit it out of the ballpark with their books! Every Last Cuckoo, The Future of Love and Breakfast With Buddha. If someone gave me a bag just filled with Algonquin titles, I could be a happy reader. And if they threw in a beach to read them on, all the better!