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January was a fun month for us at the store! Our annual Night In was a huge success, despite the frigid weather, and we were delighted when it received national attention with a write up in Shelf Awareness, a daily newsletter for booksellers and others in the book industry. For a list of the books we recommended for book groups at Night In, click here. Remember that we are glad to do book talks for book groups, and we’ll tailor our talk to your group’s interests. Contact either store to schedule a book talk. Notes from Hannah We’re pleased that, beginning with this issue, Hannah Ekren will be writing a monthly column for us. Hannah worked at both Beagle Books & Bindery and Sister Wolf Books during and after college and grad school. Last fall she went to New York City in search of fame and fortune (or at least a job in the publishing industry.) She now works for a major publisher, and will be sharing her experiences with us. The Long Way Around You can’t really know what you want to be when you’re in high school, can you?  I was so sure then what I wanted. I wanted college, I wanted to live in New York, and I wanted to be an editor. When I got to college, I realized how silly it was to have my heart set on such a specific goal.  I never deviated from my love for reading when I was setting my sights on the future, but I did stray from the publishing path. A professor I regarded highly turned me on to the joys of being an academic scholar. So grad school, it was. It was great (especially the studying in Spain part), until I actually had my own class to teach and discovered that was not my calling (I have horror stories if you ever want to hear more). However, through a graduate project for one of the most inspiring professors I had, I began to discover publishing again. This time, it wasn’t grand fantasies of red pens, author lunches, and my name in the acknowledgements that come to mind when I think of editors. I discovered the often-unsung side of publishing—marketing and publicity. I’d worked with publicists through my blog before and I was soon pretty confident that that was exactly what I wanted to be. So after a few months of blissfully doing nothing but reading and working at Beagle, I applied to the Denver Publishing Institute. A month after I graduated from DPI, I moved to New York. Two and a half months later, I got a job at a great publishing company. While it’s in sales, I’m content because I have my foot in the door and I’m just adjacent to what I’d love to be doing. So I got it: college, New York, publishing. It’s amazing to me, that I was so sure of what I wanted in high school. Although I've always known where I wanted to end up, I've learned that you have to try all the other possibilities to know that you're truly in the right place. I would kick myself for not realizing sooner that my instincts were right on, but I’ve loved every path and every aside that I’ve followed on a whim. Midwest Connections Books or authors of particular interest to our region The Fate of Mercy Alban by Minnesota author Wendy Webb “In the gothic tradition of Rebecca and The House of the Seven Gables….Hidden passages, portraits with moving eyes, and the conflicting mandates of wealth, power, and love weave together to create a storythat will send chills down your spine.” —Katherine Howe, author of The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane