Last Days at Random House

I don’t know if I’ve said this before on my blog, but my internship at Random House was the best internship I’ve had, ever. And I’ve done six. My last week there was a mixture of sad and exciting.

Last week was Children’s Publishing Celebration Week, and on Monday and Tuesday I was able to attend two perspective meetings, where I heard authors talk about their writing processes. On the first day I heard Jarret J. Krosoczka, author of the Lunch Lady graphic novel series, and Rachel Cohn and David Levithan, authors of Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist. Aside from being hilarious (who knew authors could speak so well?) I got some tips about collaborative writing, which I can hopefully successfully implement this summer when I collaborate on a teen genie young adult story (for details, check out my blog Teeny Genies).

On the second day I got to meet Clare Vanderpool, author of Moon Over Manifest, and Rebecca Stead, author of When You Reach Me. Both writers won the Newbery Medal, the highest honor for a children’s writer, and they both personally signed their books for me! Meeting Rebecca Stead was particularly exciting because she is one of Wendy Lamb’s authors, so I’ve been sending her mail for the past four months. Our meeting went something like this:

“Hi Rebecca. My name is Sabrina. You may recognize it because I’ve been sending you your author mail all semester.” Awkward grin.

“Great, hopefully our paths will cross again in the future.” Yes!

I went back to my cubicle with a happy heart. It was a little tough, however, leaving on my last day. The department I had worked in had recently moved offices. This was great, because it meant everyone had to shrink their inventory and I ended up with 853 free books (see picture here). It also meant that when we moved offices, they actually put my name on my cubicle! And the spelled it correctly!

But, just like in the system, my name on the mail slot was Starina. I suppose to Random House I will always be “Starina.”