“I like making fun, expressive, and useful stuff in print and on the web,” writes Michael Szczerban on his LinkedIn page.
And he’ll be doing more of that. Szczerban has just been promoted from associate editor to editor at Simon & Schuster.
Szczerban began his career at the publishing house as an intern during the summer in 2006, working in the managing editorial department.
S&S’s executive managing editor Irene Kheradi described him as “the most talked-about intern,” and the publisher quickly hired him up after he graduated from Carnegie Mellon the following spring. Since then, Szczerban assisted executive editor Priscilla Painton on the publication of various bestsellers including: The Presidents Club, Monkey Mind, Proof of Heaven, and Paula Deen’s Southern Cooking Bible.
Under Painton’s direction, Szczerban began acquiring his own books which ranged in genre from narrative nonfiction, commercial and literary fiction, humor, and works on food. This includes the works from food journalist Mark Schatzker and Thought Catalog editor Ryan O’Connell and Two Gentlemen of Lebowski, a book that imagines Shakespeare writing The Big Lebowski.
Szczerban won the Lawrence Peel Ashmead Editorial Award this year.
According to LinkedIn, prior to working at Simon & Schuster, Szczerban worked as a research programmer for the Carnegie Mellon Human-Computer Interaction Institute, as an assistant book designer for Carnegie Mellon, and as a developer for Words Without Borders.