Arriving at Portland State University was a matter of luck for Ivory Fields, who graduates this year with a Master’s of Science in Book Publishing. As Fields wrapped up her undergraduate degree at Central Michigan University, she was in search of a graduate program that would offer more creativity than English literature, her field of study, and allow her to work with books and authors.
“I’d searched for weeks and found — at most — 10 programs, but then a friend looks to me and says, ‘You would like Portland,’” she says.
A quick search of Portland and publishing programs led Fields to PSU. The graduate program’s partnership with Ooligan Press, PSU’s student-run book publisher, was the figurative cherry on top for Fields, who was also drawn to Portland because of its relative COVID safety and low case count during the pandemic.
“I was really drawn to this program because I wanted to work hands on with books automatically,” she says. “The publishing experience, honestly, is the best part about the program. It helps break the hiring cycle that requires experience, that you can’t get without being hired.”
Once at PSU, Fields developed a publishing course for underrepresented authors as part of her role as Ooligan’s first Diversity, Equity and Inclusion publishing assistant.
“As the publishing industry we are responsible for the production of knowledge and for a long time, underrepresented voices have been excluded from that purposefully,” she says. “I really wanted to create a program that was solely about building equity based on that understanding.”
The how-to course provides authors with information about publishing for those not usually accepted by the traditional publishing industry. The goal is to create more author diversity and show traditional publishers that they need to show up in underrepresented communities.
For Fields, this desire to help diverse authors get published is personal.
“I've always been passionate about books and I've always loved reading, but I want to see more stories that highlight things about myself that I didn't get to read when I was younger,” she says.
With that in mind, Fields also surveyed underrepresented indie authors about their publishing experience to explore what doesn’t work about the traditional publishing model for her graduate thesis.
“We want to see more underrepresented voices. We want to see more culturally relevant titles, and there is a lot more space for culturally diverse topics in indie publishing because traditional publishing is so rigid,” she says.
Of the indie publishing market, Fields adds that it’s a thriving market filled with quirks and weirdness that isn’t found in traditional publishing. “But that doesn't mean that the traditional model shouldn't work to get better,” she says.
At the same time Fields was building structures at PSU to support underrepresented artists and break down barriers to publication, she was struggling to navigate her educational goals alongside her peers during the ongoing pandemic. She describes Zoom courses as being in every class essentially alone, and finding it hard to connect with classmates. Productivity? Significantly more challenging when your office, classroom and bedroom are in the same space.
“I learned from this that at the end of the day I want a position that has flexibility, where I’m not always required to come in, but has the space for my productivity,” she says. “And my sanity.”
That same flexibility applies to students, Fields explains.
“It's okay to not have a complete plan for everything. Because if 2020 and the following years have shown us anything, your plans do not matter,” she says. “Some random unfortunate event could crash them anyway. So just focus on trying to do better than the thing that you did before.”
Future plans for Fields include a move home to Michigan to be nearer to family and tackling a stack of recreational reads that has grown in magnitude over the last several years. Career-wise, Fields is taking her own advice and letting her plans be flexible.
“I’m going to be an adult. I’m going to be a publishing employee. I’m going to be an — I don’t know yet,” she says. “I'm going to be a something, but whatever it is, I'm excited about it.”