EXECUTIVE BOARD + OFFICERS

Courtney Burke: Director and Secretary/Historian
Courtney Burke is from a town with almost as many apple trees as people and currently resides in Brookline, MA. She always has her nose in a book (or two...or three), but when she’s not reading, she loves to travel, write, take photos, and play video games (badly). She graduated from Emerson College with a B.A. in Writing, Literature, and Publishing, and works as an associate editor at Page Street Kids. Find her online: Twitter

Renée Combs: Director and President
Renée was practically predestined to have a love of words after being raised on a steady diet of books and Disney movies. She received her B.A. in Writing, Literature, and Publishing from Emerson College where she cofounded the Boston Teen Author Festival during her senior year. ​​She is now pursuing a Masters in Library Science with a focus on youth services from Simmons University. Renée lives in Cambridge, MA with her smol cat, a hoard of books, and far too many owl-shaped things. Find her online: Twitter |  Instagram | Website

Marisa Finkelstein: Director and Vice-President 
Marisa is nose-deep in words on a daily basis as a production editor at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. She graduated from Emerson College, where she majored in Writing, Literature, and Publishing and was a copresident and publisher of Undergraduate Students for Publishing (or lovingly shortened to “Pub Club”). If she’s not reading for work or leisure, you can find her curled on the sofa with her latest anime, manga, or video game obsession. Even though Marisa currently resides in New York, she can’t stay away from Boston and also fills her time as a staff member for the volunteers program at Anime Boston. She is the other cofounder of the Boston Teen Author Festival. Find her online: Twitter

Hannah Moushabeck: Director 
​Hannah is a first-generation immigrant and second-generation book-industry lifer. Born into a family-run publishing company, she learned her ABCs while shelving books in her uncle’s bookstore. Some say she little choice but to shape her life around books. After working as an independent bookseller in New England and serving as the co-chair of the New England Children’s Booksellers Advisory Committee, she flew across the country to work in children's book marketing at Chronicle Books in San Francisco. After a brief stint in Brooklyn, she landed back in her home state of Massachusetts and is currently marketing children’s books for The Quarto Group. She has a weakness for impractically sized picture books and Kanafeh. Find her online: Twitter | Instagram

Zaynah Qutubuddin: Director and Treasurer 
Zaynah is a YA writer from Richmond, VA who resides in Boston, MA where she earned her MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College. She has been a lifelong storyteller, creating tales as a kid to amuse (and scare!) her sister and many younger cousins. She loves fantastical worlds, adventurous plots, and all the complex characters you can squish into one story. Her perpetual problem is never having enough time to read, write, and eat all the things. Find her online: Twitter | Instagram | Website

India Winslow: Director
India is a book-loving Hufflepuff from Georgia now living in the Boston-Area. A former indie bookseller and Disney Cast Member, she thinks that life is a bit better with a touch of magic, and what is more magical than a great book? When she's not plotting out her next adventures, singing along to her favorite musicals, or playing with her perfect pup, Carter, she works as a Youth Services Librarian at Cary Memorial Library in Lexington, MA. Find her online: Twitter | Instagram

DEVELOPMENT TEAMS

Author Relations

Clarissa Murphy: Author/Publisher Communications
Clarissa grew up on the island of Martha’s Vineyard where she worked in her first indie bookstore. There she discovered an immense and endless passion for being a Children’s Bookseller. She tried many other jobs but keeps coming back to bookselling. At this point she is also pretty sure her book obsessed family would rebel if she stopped working in the book industry. Having worked in several Boston area bookstores, she now manages the MIT Press Bookstore in Cambridge, MA. Clarissa is also co-Director and Founder of Metro Boston Bookstore Day, which is the local branch of Independent Bookstore Day. Find her online: Twitter | Instagram

Anushree "Anu" Nande: Author Experience
​Hope is Anu's superpower. Arsenal Football Club, perhaps irrationally, dominates many of this Mumbai girl's waking (and sleeping) hours; the rest she spends reading, writing, freelancing, hoarding books, working through creative demons with sport and art, and asking herself what Coach Taylor would do. In October 2015, Underground Voices published her microfiction collection, 55 Words. Anu's also got an MA and BA in Creative Writing from Edge Hill University in Lancashire, England, and has lived in Spain for a nine-month stint as an English conversational assistant. She just finished an MA in Publishing and Writing at Emerson College and is currently a publicity intern at Candlewick Press and an undergraduate instructor at Emerson. Find her online: Twitter | Instagram | Website

Design

Emilie Rodgers
Emilie is an artist, author, seamstress, and night-owl living in the Greater Boston area. She has a B.S. in Game Art & Animation from Champlain College. She began her career as a freelance video game artist and is now employed as a graphic designer working with major brands in online advertising. In her free time she writes, draws, sews, and plans for her next world-travel adventure. Her dream is to publish a novel. Find her online: ​​Instagram | Website

Finance

Logistics

Yara Reca-Vargas 
Yara was raised between Boston and NYC. She graduated from Harvard University with her bachelor's in Liberal Arts, and she's worked at Boston Children's Hospital for the past fourteen years. However, she enjoys herself the most when she's reading. Besides reading, blogging and book hoarding, she enjoys spending time with her family and friends, volunteering with various groups, and exploring the world. She strongly believes that reading is traveling with your mind.  Find her online: Twitter | Instagram | Website

Marketing

Public Relations

Julia Domenicucci: Public Outreach
Julia spends her days and nights thinking about books. During the week, she develops digital content for English textbooks at Bedford/St. Martin's (Macmillan Learning). She graduated in 2015 with a B.A. in Writing, Literature, and Publishing from Emerson College, and often reminisces about the many hours she spent in Undergraduate Students for Publishing. Today, she spends most of her spare time reading. In her leftover spare time, she enjoys trying out restaurants around Boston, walking/hiking in pretty places, and hanging out with her large & literary-minded cat, Cedric. Find her online: Twitter

Reader Relations

ADVISORY BOARD

Patrice Caldwell is a writer, Associate Editor at Disney-Hyperion, and the founder & fundraising chair of People of Color in Publishing. She's also a contributor to Publishing Crawl, Bustle, and Autostraddle as well as a tea-enthusiast. Her writing is represented by Peter Knapp at Park Literary & Media. Find her online: Twitter | Instagram | Website

Rebecca Podos is the author of YA novels The Mystery of Hollow Places and Like Water, with her third novel, The Psychic Sisters of Saltville, coming January 2019. She is a graduate of the Writing, Literature and Publishing MFA Program at Emerson College. By day, she represents Young Adult and Middle Grade fiction at the Rees Literary Agency in Boston. Find her online: Twitter | Website

Rachel Strolle is the newly minted teen librarian at Glenside Public Library District, located in a western suburb of Chicago. She coordinated the 2018 Tournament of Books for the Young Adult Services Forum, a division of the Illinois Library Association. She was a bookseller for over five years at Andersons Bookshop, where she helped plan and run summer camps based off books and was awarded a 2017 Holiday Bookseller Bonus from James Patterson. Rachel shouts about books on her blog, Rec-It Rachel and on Twitter. Most importantly, she has a dog named Winston who is both the cutest and naughtiest Welsh Terrier in the universe. Find her online: Twitter | Website

Joanna Volpe is a literary agent and the president of New Leaf Literary & Media, where she represents a broad reach of fiction and non-fiction. Joanna works with incredible talent such as Leigh Bardugo (Six of Crows, Henry Holt), Ryan Higa (How to Write Good, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers), Veronica Roth (Divergent series, Katherine Tegen Books), Sasha Alsberg (Zenith, Inkyard Press), and Holly Black (Cruel Prince, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers), among others. In her fiction, she is seeking unique and diverse perspectives, and enjoys morbid, strange, and offbeat topics. Her tastes in non-fiction range from food-related books and travel books to general pop-culture and pop-science, on to narrative non-fiction featuring captivating and powerful women. Find her online: Twitter | Website