Carol Fitzgerald
Carol@bookreporter.com
Founder/President
As a child, I read before the sun came up. Today I still remember many of those books like old friends. In the early Seventies, I read A TRACE OF FOOTPRINTS by Ruth Wolff, a book I wanted to read again. It is out-of-print, but one of our readers found me a copy at some point, and after I re-read it I placed it on my bookshelf where I love seeing it along with my current favorite titles. The pleasure of finding a great book like this is why I love running The Book Report Network so much.
My house is filled with books; most are shelved double deep. My older son Greg, who will be a junior in college, thinks these past summers have been terrific because he had no required summer reading and thus he could meander his way through whatever he felt like reading. His interests include ocean liners, shipwrecks, lighthouses and geocaching, which keep him reading a fair share of nonfiction as well as fiction. He has quite a library of books in his room and it's interesting watching what books get carted back and forth from his dorm apartment to the house. He's been working with us for the past six years doing production work and features and he also weighed in on our Teenreads.com Ultimate Reading List.
My son Cory (age 15) never goes anywhere without a book. He's sure to take one when we gets into the car, even for a short trip to the grocery store. In fact, he most often gets in the car twice; the second time he has the book that he forgot the first time. His current favorite authors include Anthony Horowitz, Garth Nix and Eoin Colfer. He has been known to greet me at the door with a list of books that I need to get for him and he has done blurbs for publishers for a couple of the books that he particularly loves including The Hunger Games trilogy. He has interviewed a couple of authors with me and prides himself on his book collection, which now fills five bookcases double deep and trading books with friends. He takes special bookish joy in turning his reluctant reader friends onto books that he thinks they will enjoy. He proves to me day after day that there are GREAT books out there for boy readers.
My husband Tom can sit on a couch reading a book for an entire day and feel no guilt. In addition to thrillers he reads expedition and history titles. He's broadened his reading horizons as our shelves boast a pretty wide range of work these days.
My reading taste spans a wide gamut as I have the pleasure of discovering new authors every day. I love suspense-thriller writers as well as a number of literary fiction and women's fiction authors. I love well-written memoirs. As I look at my shelves it's pretty cool to see how many of the authors whose work is there I now count as friends. There is something wonderful about reading a just-done manuscript or an early reader copy of an author whose work I really love. I also love reading reader comments at Word of Mouth --- there's always a great idea there on what to read.
Before logging onto the Internet for the first time in 1995, I spent 17 years at Mademoiselle magazine in Promotion and Marketing. I relish the online medium for its immediacy --- and for the ability it gives me to work anywhere, anytime, so long as I can log on. Any bets on where I am writing this?
I am enormously proud of the network of sites we have launched that includes www.bookreporter.com, www.readinggroupguides.com, www.graphicnovelreporter.com, www.faithfulreader.com, www.teenreads.com, www.kidsreads.com and www.authorsontheweb.com.
I would love to hear what you enjoy about TheBookReportNetwork.com
and what you would like to see more of. Feel free to drop me a note anytime. I appreciate the feedback from our readers --- it's some of the best reading that I do.
John Hogan
John@bookreporter.com
Editorial Director
John Hogan is the former editor-in-chief of Pages magazine and has worked in the book industry, in one form or another, for nearly 15 years. He is also a freelance writer and reviewer. A native of Iowa, he grew up reading comics and graphic novels and continues to find them an exciting and mesmerizing format for storytelling.
Jordana Frankel
Jordana@bookreporter.com
Advertising/Promotion Assistant
Jordana Frankel used to troll the checkout aisles in grocery stores --- not for M&Ms or gum or other random knick-knacks, but for the latest Archie comics. In middle school, it was never snow globes or State Spoons that she collected; it was comics. Fast forward to the discovery of graphic novels. What began with V for Vendetta only took off from there. Her other favorites include The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Fables, Sandman, Mouse Guard, Vol. 1: Fall 1152, and Mercy Thompson: Homecoming. Talk about eclectic. And there we have it. She's always been addicted to the combination of art and language, and loves seeing the evolution of characters as the times change. It's a story that never ends, with characters who are constantly growing and changing. She is thrilled to be working on the advertising/promotion side of GraphicNovelReporter.com.
Alexandra Cannon
Alexandra@bookreporter.com
Producer/ Associate Graphic Designer
Alexandra Cannon is a recent graduate from the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. Along with a BFA in illustration, she is a self-taught website designer with a personal passion for keeping up with today’s rapidly evolving website development trends. At The Book Report Network, she assists in the design, coding and maintenance of several ongoing projects, including GraphicNovelReporter.com, Teenreads.com and Kidsreads.com, as well as several author websites.
Wiley Saichek
Wiley@bookreporter.com
Marketing Director
Wiley Saichek began working in the book industry while he was still a student, assisting novelists Chelsea Quinn Yarbro and Suzy McKee Charnas with Internet publicity projects, volunteering for The Book Report Network's chat rooms and message boards and interning at Tor Books. After graduating from the University of Houston-Victoria, Wiley joined The Book Report Network full-time. As Marketing Director, he develops and oversees Internet Marketing campaigns for the company's author and publisher clients. Nicole Bruce
Nicole@bookreporter.com
Marketing Manager
Nicole Bruce graduated from DePauw University in 2006 and moved to New York City to attend the NYU Summer Publishing Institute and work on her Master of Science in Publishing at the NYU School of Continuing and Professional Studies. While enrolled in the master's program, she interned in the publicity and marketing department for Bloomsbury Children's Books and Walker Books for Young Readers. Upon completing her degree in 2008, she joined The Book Report Network's Internet Marketing/Publicity department. As a Marketing Manager, she works on Internet Marketing/Publicity campaigns for authors and publishers.
