Publisher Speed Dating and the Oxford Literary Festival

So way back in the beginning of March we had Working in Publishing Day, which everyone just called speed dating. This is unique to Brookes, and in fact I think it's only the second or third time they've done it. In the morning there was an alumni panel and talks from some publishing recruitment companies, then in the afternoon the fun started.

There were 31 publishers at WIP this year, ranging from tiny companies like Zed Books up to mammoths like HarperCollins and Palgrave Macmillan. The spread was truly impressive, and there really was something for everyone. No sci-fi/fantasy specific publishers, unfortunately, but enough trade houses to keep me happy. Sign up sheets went up about a week in advance, and we were allowed to sign up for 5 slots initially, then after a few days they lifted that restriction and it was open season on appointments.

As to the format of the day, each appointment lasted 15 minutes, and when time was up, Angus blew a rather deafening whistle and everyone moved on to their next appointments. This was not an afternoon of job interviews, but rather a choice to ask questions and learn more about publishing and specific publishers. There were a few publishers there looking for people for work experience, and it was also a great opportunity to make contacts both for future career stuff and for dissertation research. All in all, I think the event was quite good, and I'm still marvelling at the fact that I was able to stay awake through it all (there was an IPM assignment due at 5 that day, and because of all the events that meant I had to have it in that morning, and I ended up with 20 minutes of sleep).

More recently (ending yesterday) we had the Oxford Literary Festival. We had the opportunity to volunteer to help out with this, though I think some people may have missed out as the email went out while about 1/3 of the course was at the Bologna Book Fair. I volunteered for three days, and it was a great experience. I was able to attend 15 lectures, which would have cost me £10 each, for free, and had a free lunch tossed in as well. I was in a different venue each day: the first I was in the amazingly-beautiful library at Christ Church College, surrounded by 17th century books. The second day I was at Corpus Christi College, in a smallish (~120 people) new conference centre surrounded by lovely gardens. And the third day I was in the somewhat-uninspiring marquee, which fortunately had some interesting talks.

The sheer variety of talks was astounding, especially as I know I only saw a small fraction of them. A sampling of the titles/subjects discussed in the lectures I attended is as follows: The Secret State: Whitehall and the Cold War, Levant: Splendour and Catastrophe on the Mediterranean, The Alice Behind Wonderland (especially apt at this took place in the very library Lewis Carroll used to work in), A New History of Western Philosophy, Globalization for Development: Trade, Finance, Aid, Migration, and Policy, Boris Pasternak: Family Correspondence which was a talk given by the translator who is also Pasternak's nephew, Norman Foster: A Life in Architecture, and One Day by David Nicholls.

Of particular note amongst the lectures were Alistair Urquhart, who wrote The Forgotten Highlander: An Incredible WWII Story of Survival in the Pacific. His story is truly astounding, including 3 1/2 years as a Japanese POW building the bridge over the river Kwai, sickness, starvation, being on a Japanese prisoner ship sunk by the Americans, being lost at sea alone on a raft for 5 days, and even being at a POW camp 12 miles away from Nagasaki when he watched the Bockscar fly overhead on its way to nuke the city.

Also of note was Edmun de Waal's talk on his book The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss. De Waal easily sold out the 450-seat marquee, which surprised me as I'd never heard of the book before, but it was very interesting. The book is about Edmund's research into his family's collection of Japanese netsuke, which traces not only the lives of the netsuke, but also his family, including their unfortunate luck at being Jews living in Vienna during WWII.


Any way, in short: speed dating and the literary festival were both great experiences, and have helped to reinvigorate my love for publishing, I think. This semester is really, really busy, and my time at the literary festival served as a great reminder about how important and diverse and interesting publishing is.

Tomorrow I'm off to the London Book Fair as a visitor, and I'll be back there on Wednesday as a volunteer. (The opportunity to volunteer at the LBF, which is one of the three major book fairs in the world, is another thing unique to Brookes.)