Alumnae Panelists:

Mary Beth Roche ’85is President and Publisher of MAMillan Audio and oversees MAMillan’s speaker’s bureau and podcast business. After graduating from Wellesley, she began her publishing career in the Random House Publicity department. She moved to Random House Audio as Vice President and Publishing Director to launch a joint venture between Random House and Audible.com in 1999. She served as president of the Publisher’s Publicity Association from 1996-1998, and as president of the Audio Publisher’s Association from 2003-2006. During her career she has worked with such authors as Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, Nancy Reagan, Kristin Hannah, Jeffrey Eugenides, and Nora Roberts.

Jaya Aninda Chatterjee ’08began her publishing career in the trade books division of W.W. Norton & Company in 2007, and after completing her degrees at Wellesley and Columbia University, joined Yale University Press in 2009, where she is now an editor. Highlights of Jaya’s career include being a finalist for the Yale Publishing Course Innovative Leader Scholarship, attending the Göteborg Book Fair on a fellowship from the Swedish Arts Council, being profiled by Publishers Weekly and the Wellesley alumnae magazine, speaking at publishing workshops internationally, and contributing book reviews and essays to the Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Times Literary Supplement.

Hannah Braaten ’11is an Editor at St. Martin’s Press. She attended the Columbia Publishing course after she graduated from Wellesley and was hired as an editorial assistant at St. Martin’s, working for an executive editor. Since then, she has been promoted to full editor and is actively acquiring and editing books on a wide range of topics, including mysteries, memoir, and narrative nonfiction. Some of her notable authors are Tan France, Liz Plank, Paige Shelton, Kelly Carlin, Ellie Alexander, Linda Greenlaw, and Sheila Connolly ‘72.

Lucy V. Cleland ’13is a literary agent and dramatic rights manager at Kneerim & Williams, where she works with both new and established authors on a range of projects from groundbreaking “big idea” nonfiction to upmarket fiction and select YA/children’s titles. A Southern transplant to Boston, Lucy graduated magna cum laude from Wellesley where she studied English and studio art.

Erika Turner ’13is a Trade Editorial Project Manager with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt working with Versify, HMH’s new imprint for young readers. Previously, she was an editor and writer at the Vera Institute of Justice. She has worked in editorial, advertising/marketing, and general communications for bestselling authors, tech startups, and nonprofits. Originally from Las Vegas, Erika earned her BA in religious studies at Wellesley and studied Japanese language, literature, and culture at Japan Women’s University and Waseda School of International Liberal Studies. She has a background in LGBTQ advocacy and was chosen as an emerging LGBT leader by Vice President Joe Biden in 2012.