The Columbia Publishing Course was originally founded in 1947 at Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where it thrived as the Radcliffe Publishing Course. In 2001, the course moved to Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. New York City is the heart of American publishing, and the course has taken every advantage of its current location while building on its strong legacy.
Students learn from publishers, editors, design directors, advertising experts, publicists, and writers — all leaders in the industry. More than one hundred publishing professionals come to the course each summer to describe the nature of their work, conduct workshops and seminars and answer questions in both classroom discussions and informal sessions.
The Faculty
The instructors and lecturers, drawn from all areas of the publishing industry, are recognized as experts in their fields. Many speakers are course regulars; others are invited to speak because they set trends or challenge traditional methods.
Faculty members represent publishing’s diversity: some are executives in multinational corporations, others are successful entrepreneurs, some work with blockbuster franchises, and others strive to reach specialized markets. Many have taken the course themselves and proudly return to give back to a program that did so much for them.
The Director
For thirty‐one years, Shaye Areheart worked as an editor at Doubleday, now Knopf Doubleday and the Crown Publishing Group, both divisions of Penguin Random House. She began her career as an assistant to the editor and rose through the ranks to editor, senior editor, executive editor, editorial director and publisher. She was given an eponymous fiction imprint in 1999; her authors have included Alice Hoffman, Gillian Flynn, Lisa Unger, Chris Bohjalian, Roland Merullo, Douglas Adams, Craig Nova, Ray Bradbury, Barbara Vine and Jeanne Ray.
She was also the publisher of a largely nonfiction imprint whose authors included Deepak Chopra, Carol Burnett, Ben Macintyre, Ram Dass, Tony Curtis, Cesar Millan, David Sanger and many others.
During a portion of her long career, she worked closely with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, co‐editing a variety of books from Michael Jackson’s bestselling memoir, Moonwalk, to Gelsey Kirkland’s bestselling memoir, Dancing on My Grave, to George Plimpton’s Fireworks: A History and Celebration.
Over the years, she also worked with Martin Amis, Diana Vreeland, James Dickey, Thor Heyerdahl, Stevie Nicks, Christopher Isherwood, and Sir Edmund Hillary, among others.
From 1988 to 2009, Areheart was a lecturer at the Course and in 2010 she became a member of the book workshop faculty. She became the CPC’s director, in 2013, when its long-time director, Lindy Hess, succumbed to cancer.
In 2015, Areheart worked to establish the sister version of the course at Oxford University. She feels fortunate to be in a position to help new generations carry on the important work of finding, editing, publicizing, marketing, and publishing books. She found working with authors and words to be a profoundly good way to spend one’s life and, as a lifelong avid reader, being around books made her happy. She feels publishing provides a map of our culture’s progress and interests, and being in publishing enables one to be at the epicenter of what’s important to people who read.
The Alumni
As an alum of the Columbia Publishing Course, you'll get access to an incredible alumni network. A partial list of distinguished CPC alumni who have returned to teach at the course includes:
Lee Boudreaux, Executive Editor, Doubleday
Alison Callahan, Executive Editor, Gallery Books
Morgan Entrekin, President and Publisher, Grove/Atlantic
Madeline McIntosh, CEO, Penguin Random House US
Jordan Pavlin, Executive Editor, Knopf
Brendan Cahill, Vice President, Corporate Products, Penguin Random House
Kate Evan, Publisher, Agora Books, UK
Whitney Frick, Editorial Director, Dial Press
Jazmine Hughes, Associate Editor, The New York Times Magazine
David Miller, President, Island Press
Scott Moyers, Editorial Director, the Penguin Press
Doug Pepper, President and Publisher, McClelland & Stewart, Penguin Random House Canada
Pat Strachan, Editor in Chief, Catapult
Helen Thomas, Editor at Large, Hachette UK
Weslie Turner, Associate Editor, Imprint
Tig Wallace, Senior Commisisoning Editor, Hachette UK
Lucas Wittmann, Chairman and Co-Founder, House of SpeakEasy
Meet a few of our recent alumni and hear what they say about Columbia Publishing Course.