Hello world! My name is Stephanie and I am thrilled to embark on this new adventure as a Product Coordinator at BookNet Canada. How did I get here, you ask? Well, to paraphrase Liam Neeson, I came to BookNet with a particular set of skills….
I had the great pleasure of spending the last decade working at a small, independent publisher called the Porcupine’s Quill. There I experienced a wide variety of publishing jobs: I acquired and edited books, I worked on marketing and publicity, I updated web pages, and I learned to really appreciate the art of book production. In my spare time I was a freelance ebook developer, a bookseller at Indigo, and an instructor at the Humber College Creative Book Publishing program. So naturally when a position appeared that combined my love of books and tech, I was all over it.
It will come as no surprise that I am a voracious reader and at any given time I probably have several books on the go, from literary fiction to romance to mystery to fantasy. Here are a few of my favourites, in no particular order, several of which are about (shocker!) books or writers:
- The Stone Carvers by Jane Urquhart 🍁— A true Canadian classic.
- The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón — Mysterious, lyrical, and utterly enthralling.
- The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows — Who doesn’t love an epistolary novel with humour and heart?
- Let’s Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson — I’ll never forget snort-laughing through these essays on public transit.
- Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett — A hilarious fantasy romp sure to lift your spirits.
Lest you think that all I do is think about books (which is perilously close to the truth, it must be said), I do have other interests. I am a sucker for good British television, and I have a particular soft spot for Taskmaster, All Creatures Great and Small, Doc Martin, and basically anything on Masterpiece. Heck, I love bad British television, too, and have been known to devour, with unironic glee, some truly cringe-worthy reality TV from across the pond.
I also happen to be a cheerfully untalented crafter. My creations aren’t exactly Etsy worthy, but I derive a great deal of pleasure from buying fabric, which means I end up sewing an inordinate number of pyjama pants and piecing together rather more quilts than a person ever needs.
Fun Fact: I read somewhere that a building that contains a thousand books can call itself a library, and friends, my house is getting really close.
