After earning her M.A. in English, Frances Gilbert’s first job in publishing was as a book club editor at Scholastic Canada in Toronto. She moved to New York in 2000 to set up a children’s editorial division at Sterling Publishing, where she stayed until 2012. Gilbert then moved to Random House Children’s Books, where she is vice president, editor-in-chief of Doubleday Books for Young Readers. Titles she has acquired and edited include The New York Times bestseller The Purloining of Prince Oleomargarine by Mark Twain, Philip Stead, and Erin Stead; I Don’t Want to Be a Frog by Dev Petty and Mike Boldt; the Happy Hair series by Mechal Renee Roe; and Catching Flight by Hollins alumna Rebekah Lowell (concurrently a guest speaker at Hollins). In addition to editing children’s books, Gilbert also writes them: She is the author of the picture books Can You Hug a Forest?, Go, Girls, Go!, Too Much Slime!, and I Will Always Be Your Bunny in addition to several Step Into Reading titles. You can follow Gilbert on Twitter at @GoGirlsGoBooks, where she posts about children’s writing and editing.
All Children’s Literature and Book Illustration events will be held in person and simultaneously broadcast by Zoom webinar. They are free and open to the public. To receive webinar links to the series, please email kidlit@hollins.edu.
(Photo: Vaz Dando)
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