Do you dream of working at a publishing house, indie magazine or scholarly journal? Then our publishing and editing major is for you.
You won’t find this kind of program at any other liberal arts colleges — or at many far larger colleges either. We offer one of the only publishing majors in the nation.
Publishing is all about connecting. Writers and readers. Art and business. Traditional and new technologies. Gain the knowledge and skills to navigate these interconnections, and reflect on the:
Cultural role of publishing
History of the book
Implications of the shift to digital publishing
Our publishing and editing program is big enough that you’ll have access to a high-tech, dedicated lab and eight department student publications, and small enough that you’ll get hands-on, personalized attention from faculty. Our students have even helped produce a professional publication, which saw two pieces nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
Our track record for internships at top magazines, newspapers and presses and placements at the three most prestigious summer certificate programs is exceptional. Internships include:
UrbanEdge Publishing
Penguin Random House
Massie & McQuilkin Literary Agents
Ingram Content Group
Each year we successfully place graduates in the Columbia Publishing Course and NYU’s Summer Publishing Institute. All five students from the Class of 2019 who applied to Columbia’s program, the most prestigious program in the country, were accepted.
Flexible skills for any field
You’ll be ready to succeed in publishing and editing when you graduate, and the skills you’ll gain translate to many industries including media management, marketing, library and information science, communications, and more.
Susquehanna University will be restarting the SU Press as an entirely student-run operation. The press will provide hands-on experience in publishing and is a collaborative project with the Sigmund Weis School of Business. With this project, our undergraduate publishing program will be the only one in the country affiliated with a business school. More details about the SU Press will be coming in fall 2022.
A Susquehanna education provides students with flexibility in coursework so they can conduct research, intern and study abroad. When it comes to your major, you’ll begin taking classes in your chosen program of study in your first year.
Here are some of the courses that publishing & editing majors take in their first few semesters at Susquehanna.
Simon & Schuster The Ross Yoon Agency AfterShock Comics Holiday House Labyrinth Books Leshne Agency Penguin Random House (Publicity) KAMA, IOS App Pearson Education Free Spirit Publishing Harper Collins (HarperTeen) Cengage Learning Berkley Books/Penguin Random House Penn Foster Education Workman Publishing The Pottsville Republican-Herald Palgrave Macmillan Highlights for Children Business 2 Community MacMillan Learning So to Speak: A Feminist Journal of Language and Art Ingram Content Group Print: A Bookstore (Portland, ME) Crayola Touchstone Books U.S. Pharmacopeia The Vanguard Group Stanford University
Recent internship placements:
Dzanc Books Citizen’s Climate Lobbby Her Campus Media Penguin Random House UrbanEdge Publishing Overlook Press Massie & McQuilkin Literary Agents Help the Rural Child Charity Bookstore, Maubray, South Africa NEPA Scene Harvey Klinger, Inc. Logbuch KG, Bremen, Germany Odyssey Online Sunbury Press Atticus Books Judson Press Llewellyn Worldwide (publisher) San Diego Magazine The Star Ledger Artvoice: Buffalo’s #1 Newsweekly Sacramento Book Review The Hopkins Review Business 2 Community The Arabian Sport Horse Magazine Susquehanna Life Magazine W.W. Norton Writ Large Management Pretty Pictures Entertainment
“Rarely do creative writing and literature students (either undergrad or grad) get any exposure to the mechanics much less the conceptual frameworks of publishing, and your students in the Publishing and Editing program — and the English and Writing majors I encountered — seemed well-informed, exceedingly thoughtful and above all, magnificently curious. Their questions revealed how much thinking they’ve already done which means they’ve considered what publishing is and can be, how it work (and sometimes doesn’t). From the examples of chapbooks and literary journals I saw, it also seems as if they’re putting ideas into practice. Kudos to you and the Susquehanna faculty for creating a unique and thriving community of future publishers!” -Lisa Pearson, publisher of Siglio Press
“Fortunately, some institutions have found ways to innovate within traditional liberal arts disciplines to provide greater career development opportunities to meet student, parent, and law maker demand while safeguarding their liberal arts core….The new [Publishing & Editing] major has been extremely successful, helping to increase English enrollments by 80% in just two years. By aligning the program with alumni career outcomes Susquehanna has been able to ensure that their students gain more specialized skill sets and knowledge within the English program without sacrificing the critical breadth the major supplies.” -Ashley Delamater, EAB, “Redesign academic programs to meet student demand: How Susquehanna University repackaged their English program”
John Gall is Senior Vice President, Creative Director for the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Gall was formerly creative director of Abrams Books, and prior to that, vice president and art director for Vintage and Anchor Books, both imprints of Penguin/Random House. A designer, artist, author, editor and teacher, Gall is famous for designing book covers for books by Jennifer Egan, August Wilson and Haruki Murakami.
Gall’s lecture “Title, Author and Maybe Some Kind of Image,” will take the audience through his career in book publishing. He will dig deep into his creative process and show how he translates words on a page into beautiful, eye-catching designs.
There will be an extended Q&A following the lecture to allow for a vibrant discussion.
High school students interested in attending, please register here.
SU community and the general public can join the event here.
Past lectures
Jennifer Baker, managing editor at Random House Children’s Books, a contributing editor to Electric Literature, editor of Everyday People: The Color of Life — A Short Story Anthology and the creator and host of the podcast Minorities in Publishing — March 1, 2021
Lisa Pearson, founder of Siglio Press — Sept. 12, 2020
Cheryl Ball, director of the Digital Publishing Collaborative at the Wayne State University Library and editor of Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy — Nov. 2, 2018
Jennifer Weis, executive editor and manager of content development at St. Martin’s Press — Feb. 6, 2018
Christina Harrington ’12, assistant editor at Marvel comics — March 20, 2017
We started this national group of student editors and writers and it now has an annual conference hosted by member institutions and a caucus that meets at AWP each year.
