Bay Area
WOMEN in PUBLISHING
Building an inclusive community for women-identifying and nonbinary publishing professionals
THE ROBIN SEAMAN AWARD
REG LIM (they/them)
Reg Lim is a writer, editor, and publishing professional with over seven years of experience. They have edited for the now-defunct but much loved Catapult Magazine, written and marketed for Cut Fruit Collective, and their writing at Impact was part of a body of work that won the 2023 Short Award in News & Media. They now work as a Marketing Coordinator for Chronicle Books—where they help connect beautifully illustrated and written books with educators and libraries across the nation.
MIA VILLANUEVA (she/her)
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Mia is a strong believer in the power of advocacy-based storytelling. As an aspiring writer and editor, she is honored to serve as an intern at West Trade Review and former Associate Editor of The Owl, a literary arts publication. She has worked in education for the past five years and hopes to one day use her editorial background to bring awareness to the issues facing education today. In her free time, Mia enjoys making jewelry, scrapbooking, and traveling.
AUDREY CADENA (she/her)
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Audrey Cadena has long aspired to work in the publishing industry to advocate for diverse books so everyone can feel seen and represented in the stories they read. As someone who is Filipino-Ecuadorian, this is an experience that she greatly lacked as a kid and is why she’s always looking to amplify historically marginalized voices. Audrey is currently an Academic Marketing Intern at Macmillan and has previously participated in internship programs at W.W. Norton and Writers House. She graduated from Sonoma State University with a BA in English and a concentration in Creative Writing, as well as a minor in Film Studies. Audrey is excited to continue working with books and connecting readers with their new favorite stories.
NATASCHA HOLENSTEIN (she/her)
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Natascha is an editor, writer, and educator residing in the East Bay Area. She studied English Literature and Linguistics at Cal Poly SLO and has interned for Pegasus Books and Creative Media Agency. She is the Nonfiction Editor for Rawhead: A Journal of Art and Literature, whose work centers on resistance and the arts. Her writing has been published in After the Art, Slash Magazine, London Fog Literary, and elsewhere.
JAZMINE AGREGADO (she/her)
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Jazmine Agregado is a Bay Area native working as a copyeditor and proofreader at McSweeney's. She received her BA in English with a concentration in Creative Writing at CSU Northridge. During her time in Southern California, she was Lead Copyeditor and Assistant Managing Editor at Northridge Review, interned at the Los Angeles Review of Books in the Copydesk position, and tutored students with diverse writing abilities and reading compression skills. With her experience and ambition pouring into each other, she aims to continue her editorship to serve underserved voices and stories of the Bay-Area communities she loves.
JASMINE MULLIKEN (she/her)
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Jasmine Mulliken is a digital humanist working at the intersection of publishing, project development, and digital archiving. She is sole proprietor of Jasmine Mulliken Digital Publishing Services, a freelance and consulting business she started in 2024 that helps authors develop and archive, and publishers support, innovative digital alternatives to the traditional monograph. She is also Journals and Digital Program Manager at Stanford University Press, where in 2016 she began helping establish and standardize the Press’s digital interactive monographs program. In 2024 she began managing the Press’s online open-access journals program as well. She is the author of the online Mapping Dubliners Project, which is where her love for digital publishing all started.
EMILY SHAPIRO (they/them)
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Emily Shapiro is a writer currently working as a Senior Publicist for North Atlantic Books. They got started in the bay area literary scene by interning at Zoetrope All-Story and working at City Lights Booksellers and eventually moving on to Pop-Up Magazine. Finding their way into publishing was circuitous, so they’re interested in how to make the industry more accessible. They also spend a lot of time writing short stories and organizing with California Coalition for Women Prisoners and the ICE Out of Dublin Coalition.
RUCY CUI (she/her)
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Rucy Cui is a writer and 2024–2026 Wallace Stegner Fellow in fiction at Stanford University. Her time in the publishing industry spanned roles in marketing and publicity at Insight Editions, Lonely Planet, and Hachette Book Group.
GABBY CAZARES-LOPEZ (she/her)
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Gabby is currently the Marketing Manager at North Atlantic Books, where she first began her publishing career as an intern in 2019. She earned her BA in Print/Online Journalism with a minor in Anthropology from San Francisco State University. Born and raised in the Bay Area, she enjoys going on outdoor walks and visiting new bakeries.
SHALRA AZEEM (she/her)
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Shalra Azeem is an Editorial Assistant at University of California Press, where she assists with the History and Science lists. She graduated from Reed College with a degree in History-Literature and interned at W.W. Norton, The New Press, and Bloomsbury, before moving to the Bay in 2025. She currently lives in Oakland, CA.