Jeanette Perez is an Editor at Harper Collins, where she works in two departments: Harper Flagship and Harper Perennial. Perez’s career publishing began unassumingly enough while she was living in the Bay Area, working at Intelligent Enterprise magazine. As she began taking on more and more duties, Perez discovered an affinity for writing and editing. To that end, she earned her M.A. in English and Columbia University as a means to get to New York, the center of publishing. From there, Perez states that she “literally was waiting tables for a long time,” and that it was with a bit of luck with friends and emails that she secured her current position.
As a Mexican-American from California, Perez takes pride in being able to bring an extra viewpoint to the table. She recounts a time when a book centering around a Mexican-American was overlooked, and states that her desire to take a second look at it does not come from her being a Latina, necessarily. Rather, “I feel like sometimes New York is very microscopic or myopic in way when it comes to only thinking about New York.” To help combat this and bring a plethora of universal books, Perez asserts that she “wants to work on books that kind of represent other cultures. It is not necessary that it has to be Latino, but just kind of bringing in voices that are not normally represented.”