TELL US MORE RAKIA CLARK ’01
By the time she became an executive editor at Mariner Books, Rakia Clark had witnessed two decades of evolution in the book publishing industry. The consolidation and merging of publishing houses, combined with Amazon’s interruption of traditional bookselling methods and tech advances that enabled new platforms for consuming literature, has left the industry looking less and less like the one the Haverford English major entered after her 2001 graduation. Clark launched her book-publishing career with a Columbia University course and steadily rose through the editorial
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Haverford Magazine
ranks at major publishers such as HarperCollins, Penguin, Kensington, and Beacon before taking her current post last fall. Throughout, she has put the spotlight on marginalized voices and brought to print such acclaimed works as Mona Eltahawy’s bold feminist manifesto The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls and poet and screenwriter Brian Broome’s Kirkus Prize-winning Punch Me Up to the Gods: A Memoir, his powerful account of coming of age as a gay Black man. Sameer Rao ’11 spoke to Clark about her long career in publishing and the industry changes she’s witnessed.
PHOTO: GABBI BASS
Shifting the Culture One Book at a Time
