MA/MS in Book Publishing: Advisory Board

Maeve MacLysaght

Maeve MacLysaght is a literary agent at Aevitas Creative Management representing commercial genre fiction and graphic novels for all ages. She has over a decade of experience in the publishing industry on both the publisher and agent side, and holds a B.A in Comparative Literature from Occidental College, a publishing certificate from NYU, an MLitt in Ancient Greek Monsters from The University of St Andrews in Scotland. The goal of her list is to increase the amount of queer and BIPOC joy in the world, and to make space for marginalized authors to rework the tropes that historically oppressed them.

Fin Leary

Fin Leary (they/he) is an author, a program manager at We Need Diverse Books, and a faculty member at GrubStreet and at Emerson College, where they teach in the MFA program. Fin is the editor of the science fiction anthology Future States of Stars (OwlCrate Press, 2026), and a contributor to the young adult horror anthology These Bodies Ain’t Broken edited by Madeline Dyer (Page Street Publishing, 2025). They were a 2024 Lambda Literary Emerging LGBTQ+ Voices Fellow for Young Adult Fiction and a 2024 Publishers Weekly Star Watch honoree. Fin lives with their orange literary cat and a rainbow bookshelf outside of Boston, Massachusetts.

Denise Morales Soto

Denise Morales Soto (she/her) is a bilingual copyeditor at Random House Children’s Books. In her role, she works on a variety of titles in English and Spanish, including nonfiction and fiction books across different genres, and has helped in the development and standardization of the Spanish-language publishing processes. She has a BA in Literature and Linguistics from the University of Puerto Rico, Cayey, and an MA in Book Publishing from Portland State University.

Kim Hogeland

Kim Hogeland is the acquisitions editor at Oregon State University Press, where she acquires books in Indigenous studies, environmental studies, and the history and culture of the Pacific Northwest. She holds degrees in history from UC Berkeley and UC Davis, and has previously worked at the University Press of Kansas, University of California Press, and Heyday Books.

Dana Trocker

Andrea Fleck-Nisbet

Andrea Fleck-Nisbet is the Chief Executive Officer of the Independent Book Publishers Associations. Andrea began her tenure as CEO of the Independent Book Publishers Association in 2022. Prior to that she was the founding vice-president and publisher of HarperCollins’ lifestyle imprint, Harper Horizon. Andrea spent fifteen years in sales, digital media, and business operations at Workman Publishing and was Director of Content Acquisition at Ingram Content Group. She was formerly on the board of the Book Industry Study Group.

Chris Gruener

Chris Gruener is a seasoned publishing executive with deep roots in the Pacific Northwest and a career spanning the breadth of the book industry. He began in sales and marketing roles at Nolo Press, Baker & Taylor, and Faherty & Associates before acquiring Cameron + Company in 2009 with his wife, Nina Gruener. Under their leadership, the California-based publisher flourished, expanding into children’s books and design services. In 2020, Cameron was acquired by Abrams Books, where Gruener continued as Publisher and Vice President of Business Development. In 2025, he co-founded The Stable Book Group, a collective uniting several independent publishers to foster collaboration and shared resources, with offices in Brooklyn and Petaluma, California.

Joe Biel

Joe Biel is a self-made autistic publisher who draws origins, inspiration, and methods from punk rock to sell millions of books. Biel is the founder and CEO of Microcosm Publishing, Publishers Weekly's #1 fastest-growing publisher of 2022 and #3 in 2023/2024, and WorkingLit, the software responsible for Microcosm's aforementioned success—now available for other publishers. Biel has been featured in Time, Esquire, Art of Autism, Reading Glasses, Bulletproof Radio, Spectator (Japan), G33K (Korea), and Maximum Rocknroll, as well as NPR and PBS. Biel is the author of A People's Guide to Publishing, Autism Relationships Handbook, Unfuck Your Business, Enduring Legacy of Portland's Black Panthers, and dozens more. Biel is the director of five feature films, including Aftermass: Bicycling in a Post-Critical Mass Portland, $100 & a T-Shirt, and hundreds of short films. Biel lives in Portland, OR.