“When my wife and I moved to Florida for her career, I wasn’t sure how this older congregation would receive my spiky hair and outside-the-box personality, but they embraced me and encouraged my vision for the church and reaching out to young persons.” 

Russell Clark: Pastor

I serve as the senior pastor at First United Methodist Church in Reddick, Fla. As the only staff of this small, rural church, I am responsible for preaching, worship, teaching, visionary leadership, pastoral care, evangelism and coordinating volunteers to help with our ministries. A regular week includes 30-60 hours of work. I spend most of that time researching and preparing for the Sunday morning worship service (including my sermon), attending to pastoral care needs and attending church events—such as committee meetings, fellowship gatherings and Bible studies. I spend the remainder of my time completing district and conference paperwork, preparing for weddings and funerals, managing conflict, preparing ordination paperwork and brainstorming/preparing for future events. I am blessed with great volunteers who I trust to prepare the youth and family activities and take care of the financial responsibilities, building management and marketing/evangelism needs. Even though I do not have a staff, these volunteers make my job much easier. Part of my job is to oversee their work, educate them on how to improve and continually celebrate the work they have done for the church.

My senior year of high school, I delivered my first sermon at the youth Sunday service. This time (and every time I delivered a sermon after that), I received an overwhelmingly positive reaction from the congregation. I knew that preaching was my gift, so I majored in Christian Education at Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth to prepare to be a minister. I served as a youth minister at three different churches before becoming an associate pastor while I finished seminary at Brite Divinity School at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth. In The United Methodist Church, there is an ordination process to qualify each minister for a lifetime of service, and I am pursuing ordination as an elder in The United Methodist Church.

When my wife and I moved to Florida for her career, I wasn’t sure how this older congregation would receive my spiky hair and outside-the-box personality, but they embraced me and encouraged my vision for the church and reaching out to young persons. I have served in Reddick for 2 1/2 years now. In this time, the church has transformed from having an average of 15 during worship to 115. The church started with 5 youth and we now have more than 25. Before, the church was unable to pay bills without constant fundraisers and now we are self-sufficient and able to meet 100% of our conference apportionment payments. Now, funds raised help families in tough situations and help support the family, youth, and children’s ministries. We recently had 26 new members join the church in one Sunday. This is a testament to the excitement in our church, the motivation of the leadership and the joy that new, younger families bring to our congregation.

Tommy, Julya, and Luke Sims started attending our church when I first started my appointment in Reddick. I saw them every Sunday in worship, so I was surprised to learn that they were not attending church as a family at all before.

Tommy and Julya enjoyed my passionate and genuine sermons, and Tommy appreciated the fact that he could wear shorts to church. When Tommy’s lung cancer progressed, they asked me to pray for his upcoming operation. They informed me then that my sermons, leadership and attention to youth saved their family, their marriage and their faith.

Tommy died in September 2011 at the age of 42. At his funeral, I was touched to see he was wearing a wristband that says, “God is Big enough,” which I gave all of our church members during a sermon series I did on dealing with suffering. Julya told me he never took the wristband off. She said, “Russell, Tommy didn’t say much, but he definitely believed God is big enough.” There were more than 300 people at Tommy’s funeral, and we have many new church members today because the witness at Tommy’s memorial service touched them.

We had a mission trip in June 2012 where we helped local families with projects such as wheelchair ramps, yard work and home repairs. Julya and Luke both attended the mission trip to serve these families and do the hard, sweaty work in the middle of the hot Florida summer. Julya told me at the end of the week that this mission trip was the most transformative experience of her life and she felt that she could move on with her life after Tommy’s death. Twelve-year-old Luke broke down in tears one evening on the trip. He told me he knows he is going to be okay because his dad still lives within him.

I don’t just like my job; I love my job. To see the transformation of the Sims family in spite of tragedy is just one example of why I love what I do. There are countless stories of families and individuals who remind me of the eternal smile that a new life in Jesus Christ can bring. I continually have more confidence and passion to be a pastor in The United Methodist Church because of the inspirational transformations I am blessed to witness day after day.

When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grow up?

As a kid, I did not have much confidence. I felt like I was just mediocre at everything. I played “left out” on every sports team I was a part of, I didn’t excel in band and I wasn’t the brightest student. The only place where I felt special was in church. My youth group included my closest friends and nothing excited me more than to hear about how God can affect our lives. I never knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. I considered becoming a veterinarian or joining the military or working with computers, but I wanted a job that meant something to me.

After I delivered my first sermon, this was the first time I felt like someone special. This was the first time I felt like I could excel at something. I found the confidence to be someone through my church and my calling to be a pastor. I was the shyest, nerdiest kid growing up, but now every Sunday I stand up in front of my church and I know God gave me a gift. God made me to be awesome! I am humbled and blessed by the opportunity I have to serve as the senior pastor at First United Methodist Church in Reddick, Fla.I believe God made everyone to be awesome! My ministry is to empower people to do the ministry they are called to do.

Russell would love to answer any questions you have about his life or your own on his profile. Read more about his story and ask him questions on his Sokanu Profile

Steven J. Bell

What do you do?

The great thing about a career in librarianship is the range of options for specialization. The major spheres of practice are public, special (corporate, law, medicine), school (K-12) and academic (post-secondary). For the bulk of my career I’ve worked in academic libraries. Within a college or university setting you can further specialize by function and discipline. Some academic librarians work at an information desk or do instruction, support the computer system, and others are involved with content management and yet others focus on rare books or archives. Many have subject expertise.

I’ve worked in many different academic library positions including reference librarian, instruction specialist and library director. My specialty was business research, and I worked at the University of Pennsylvania/Wharton School Library. I’m currently the Associate University Librarian for Research and Instruction at Temple University. As an academic administrator my work involves planning, policy making, developing new services, collaborating with other groups, and providing leadership for our public service operations. I still work a shift at the reference desk and do some instruction; those are skills I like to maintain and it brings me into contact with our students and faculty.

One of the great things about librarianship is that it’s being part of a professional community. There are many professional development opportunities. I’m active in the Association for College & Research Libraries; I currently serve as our president. Like many other academic librarians I’ve published in scholarly and trade journals. I’ve blogged for many years, and I write regular columns for one of our professional publications. You can get deeply involved in your work or you can keep it nine-to-five if that’s your preference.

Librarianship is a helping profession and it’s all about doing work that makes a difference in people’s lives, whether it’s giving them research guidance, helping them become literate, giving them access to the Internet and information, exposing them to great literature or their first storybook, enabling them to explore the past or discover the future. That’s what gives satisfaction to the people who enter this profession.

How did you get here?

Many librarians share a similar theme or story when it comes to answering this question. I’d categorize them as follows:

·       Love to read/Love books

·       Love being in libraries

·       Had relative who was a librarian

·       Loved my school/public librarian

·       Didn’t know what else to do with my [advanced] degree

Many librarians enter the profession as a second-career, often coming from fields such as K-12 education, nursing and book store sales. There is clearly something desirable about being around books, reading, serving people or the library environment that is attractive. None of these quite describes how I got here, which I did quite early – right out of undergraduate studies. Many librarians start after having pursued additional degrees or working other jobs. I did not grow up wanting to be a librarian. I knew I didn’t want to do what my father did (auto mechanic). Like many of my peers in the seventies I went to college with no specific plans. I drifted. In my junior year I chose a major that fit my talents – researching and writing and I thrived. When it came time to decide what to do after college, I focused on a graduate program that would prepare me for work in a museum or archive. Then I found out about the Drexel University library program in my own city. Once I looked in to the program, it was a revelation of sorts. You mean I could get paid to do research or help others with their research? I was sold. It was a great time to enter the profession, it being the dawn of electronic research. I’ve seen enormous change in my 35 years in the profession. Librarianship is not a career for those who fear or resist change. It’s the change, the new technologies, the need to adapt to new user expectations that creates the exciting challenges of our work. Librarianship is plagued by career stereotypes: all we do is read books all day – or put them back on shelves; we stamp cards with due dates; we answer simple questions such as “where are the books on psychology”; spinsters with their hair in a bun with a pencil through it, shushing people all day. You see these stereotypes played out in the media all the time. The truth is most laypeople have no idea about the complexity of our work – until they need help with a difficult research question or navigating the world of junk food information in seek of something they value.

Now I see a new generation of young people being attracted to the challenges of librarianship, and their desire to help people and make a difference for them. They like working with technology, and using it to create solutions to information problems. Most of all they are intellectually curious, and they want to keep this profession relevant, timely and useful to their community members. That’s why I’m here – and here to stay. Getting that first professional position can be a challenge though. It takes effort, but that’s true in many professions. I’m constantly amazed that I’ve been able to sustain a career, never being without a job in thirty-five years, being able to achieve vertical mobility by working in a variety of interesting settings and never having to leave a city I enjoy. Librarianship is the kind of profession where that can happen.

Why do you like it?

I’ve thought about that in the past, and I even wrote an article several years ago in which I tried lay out the primary reasons for my passion for academic librarianship. For me it is a combination of doing the type of work I really enjoy and find challenging, and being able to apply my skills to helping other people through education or direct application of my skill set. I really like the juxtaposition of working with cutting edge technologies and exploring bookshelves for new discoveries. I really like applying the latest learning technologies to educating students to be wise consumers of information.  I really like knowing that what I do, the library systems I help build and sustain, help people achieve success. I can imagine that many non-librarians must think our jobs are really boring – what with all that sitting around reading books all day – but I can honestly say I go to work every day looking forward to it, and rarely ever find myself being bored just staring at the clock waiting for the day to end. I just can’t even imagine being in that situation.

It helps that I also enjoy working in the college and university environment. I refer to myself as being a student of higher education, and I earned my doctorate in higher education several years ago because of my passion for being around students and faculty. Thanks to my career in higher education, I’ve been able to take many courses, earn my doctorate (thanks to tuition remission), send my two children to college (thanks to tuition assistance), and been motivated by being around many interesting people and all the social, cultural and intellectual stimulation that accompanies being on a college campus. It also provides other benefits, such as access to a great workout facility and fitness classes.

I also enjoy having the opportunity to be professionally active. As I grew in my career I became less satisfied with the standard nine-to-five existence, and I committed to getting engaged in my profession by being active in associations, writing for publication and challenging myself to become a good presenter (I’ve now delivered over twenty keynote speeches for a variety of library organizations). These are the kinds of opportunities that librarianship offers, and you just need to be willing to take advantage of them – and take some risks in sharing your voice. It’s not a requirement for most librarians, perhaps excepting those who will find themselves on the tenure track at certain academic institutions. But for me it has always generated much greater enthusiasm for my work and for engaging with my colleagues. Librarianship is not for everyone, but it’s been a great career for me. I always encourage students who demonstrate a passion for research to look into the possibilities that it could be a great career for them as well.

Steven Bell is the Associate University Librarian at Temple University. You can find more information about him or his projects at http://stevenbell.info  Growing up he really didn’t know what he wanted to be. But it turned out alright anyway.

Kara

What do you do?

I am a flight attendant for a US based, domestic airline. 

How did you get there?  

After graduating from University, I moved back in with my parents, while looking for a full-time job in marketing and advertising, and teaching Pilates on the side.  I had always excelled in school and whatever I chose to do, but the move from student to career person was a tough and challenging transition that left me depressed, confused, and lost.  During this time, I ended up having an opportunity to travel to Egypt with a friend that worked in the Airline industry.  On this trip, he advised me to apply for a job as a flight attendant. Even though I had grown up in a family with an aviation background; dad’s a corporate pilot, brother flies for a cargo company, and I had soloed a private plane when I was 16, I had always thought that I would HATE being a flight attendant.  I wanted to do something different, make my own way. 

Well, I took my friend’s advice, and applied to all of the airlines that I found to be hiring at the time.  I really had no idea what I was getting into, and although I was nervous for my interview, I felt like I had nothing to lose, so I displayed the bubble and outgoingness that is a signature of my personality.  And I got the job!  I was lucky enough to be based in Southern California, close enough to family, but far enough to be independent.  I’ve had the privilege of developing deep friendships with my colleagues, have a schedule that allows me to see many new places and meet incredible people all over the world, and been able to share that through a website that I started, chronicling the tales of a life as a flight attendant.

Why do you like it?

There are so many reasons that I love my job.  I love working as a flight attendant because the schedule is always different.  I have time to pursue interests outside of work, one being that I am IN LOVE with travel.  I like that I am not at a desk, and that I get to meet new people every day.  I even like the customer service part of flying, and the job has developed more patience, assertiveness, and communication skills within myself.  I have matured as a person, and although I feel that working as a flight attendant is not my life long dream career, as I hope to pursue more in the area of volunteer work writing, and learning languages, I believe that somehow, the universe landed me right where I needed to be, now, and that’s when I didn’t even know that I would like to fly!  Because, becoming a flight attendant has been the answer to my lostness, sometimes I promote it as the answer to everyone’s life direction solution, but it’s not for all.  It was, and is, my answer to opening a life that is better than I once ever dreamed, and if anyone asks me, I still bubble in delight that I love my job and gush that “I just spent twenty days in Vietnam and Thailand.”  

This job has made me dream on an entirely different scope, and I’ve been forever changed.  Traveling to Haiti, Costa Rica, Istanbul, Slovenia, Portugal, Guatemala, Czech Republic, and the list could go on for paragraphs and paragraphs, in the time span of less than four years, will do that to you.     

Follow Kara’s adventures on her blog The Flight Attendant Life

Rachael Pontillo 

What do you do?

I am am award-winning board certified holistic health practitioner and wellness educator. I work with clients individually and in groups in the Philadelphia area, and nationwide via telephone or video conferencing. I am also a holistic aesthetician and I make all-natural skincare products. I teach natural skin care classes in the Philadelphia area, hold free monthly webinars on various health and wellness topics, and write the popular blog www.holisticallyhaute.com. I also write for a well respected aesthetics trade journal, as well as other online publications, and speak at national aesthetics and health-related conferences.

How did you get there?

It’s been a long and winding road—I began my college education as a design major and ultimately graduated from Philadelphia University with a Bachelor of Science in Architectural Studies with a minor in Humanities. I liked architecture, but I realized that my interest was more in the history and theory behind it rather than the actual design work. I had a sales background from working years of retail jobs through high school and college which helped me land my first job after graduation as an advertising sales rep for a healthcare publishing company.

I moved from sales into marketing and copywriting, and from then I moved more into editorial writing and editing. I continued my writing and editing work on a freelance basis for several years (and still continue) for one of the best known medical publishers in the world. I became a mom in 2004 and again in 2007 and continued to freelance while staying home with my kids. Skincare and makeup were always strong interests of mine (much of the retail sales I did was in the beauty industry), so I decided to go back to school for aesthetics. I realized I needed to set myself apart in the job market to try to find the perfect part-time job, so I used my writing and editorial skills and began writing www.holisticallyhaute.com. My focus within the realm of aesthetics leaned more towards the holistic and more natural approach.

Personally and professionally, I began to see the connection between a healthy diet and having great skin. I decided to go back to school again for nutrition, to enhance my education in this area and open more doors for my career. I started taking health coaching clients and quickly realized that the importance really lies more with overall health and wellness rather than just having healthy skin—but great skin is a bonus you get from taking care of yourself on the inside. I had no idea I’d be doing the work I do now because of it.

Why do you like it?

I love my work for SO many reasons. I help people improve their overall level of health which greatly improves their overall happiness and quality of life. I help people feel great about themselves. I empower people to take control of their own health and their own lives and become educated consumers. I spread the message about the importance of making healthier diet and lifestyle choices as well as choosing skincare products with safe ingredients. My work is incredibly rewarding and I feel that I make a difference in the lives of individual people, and help to broaden the minds of larger audiences with my writing and public speaking.

When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?

A model or a performing artist on a Broadway stage…maybe in my next life :)

Follow Rachael Pontillo on Twitter 

JoJo Jensen

What do you do?

I’m a voice over talent. I read and record scripts for every type of project from documentary narrations to on-hold messages, commercials to training videos and almost everything in between.  Video games and cartoon voices are on my project wish list and with deep respect, I don’t narrate audiobooks.

Armed with a quiet, professional studio and an Internet connection, I voice twenty or more projects everyday and send them to clients all over the globe. I’m excited to go to work everyday!

How did you get there?

The biggest misunderstanding about becoming a voice over talent is that simply having a good voice is enough to have a successful career. It’s not.  More important than having natural talent is taking the time to learn and practice the skills required to become a professional.

The first time I stepped behind a microphone to record a radio commercial for my employers, it felt like home. I was terrified and my voice cracked, but I knew right then, that becoming a voice talent was what I wanted to do.  I quit my job, found a voice over coach and never looked back.

I worked with my coach for two years taking private lessons and weekend workshops. She taught me the fundamentals of voice over including how interpret a script, how to avoid popping my Ps and how to deal with a sore throat.  My teacher set the bar high for skill and professionalism making sure I would be ready for any project no matter how complicated or challenging.  She taught me the importance of practice both in and out of the studio and pushed me to take more classes in acting and improvisation, along with singing lessons to strengthen my voice.  

Becoming a voice talent isn’t about being good at only one thing – it’s about having a variety of skills that have been honed through practice and the ability to put them all together when you need to, like in front of a room of eight casting directors just waiting to be wowed.

After cutting my first demo, I created a marketing strategy to land projects. When I started, it was cassette tapes, outside recording studios and the only available projects I could get were where I lived. Now it’s Mp3s, home studios and a global market.  I record from a home studio and email finished audio to my clients around the world. It’s really cool and never ceases to amaze.

Why do you like it?

It’s fun.  Don’t get me wrong – it’s hard work every single day, but I have such a great time every day I step into the studio and hit record that it’s worth it any struggle to keep going.  I can’t imagine doing anything else.

When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?

I wanted to be a French speaking marine biologist, a la Jacques Cousteau, a family court judge, a dancer, a gymnast and an international business mogul.  However, when no one was looking, I read the back of toothpaste tubes out loud and watched British comedies so I could practice my British accent. 

A professional voice over talent with more than eighteen years experience, JoJo Jensen has recorded every type of project from short, snappy television commercials to YouTube marketing videos, long form documentary narrations to on hold messages thanking you for your call. With a background in sales and marketing years before ever standing in front of a microphone, JoJo runs her voice over career with a sincere dedication to customer service and satisfaction! Listen to JoJo Voice Over demo samples at www.jojojensen.com! 

Photo credit to  AJ Halliday Photography

Vince Rotello

What do you do?

I am a Professor in the Chemistry Department at the University of Massachusetts. I have a group of 30 researchers working on biomedical applications of nanoparticles, including new anti-cancer strategies and diagnostic tests for cancer and other diseases. 

How did you get there?

Undergraduate and graduate school, a postdoc, and a lot of hard work!

Why do you like it?

It’s like running a start-up company focused on making peoples lives better. I work with a great group of students, postdocs and visiting scientists, and have the ability to move in new direction—as long as I can get someone to fund it.

When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?

I wanted to be a chemist—I’ve always liked making things, and that’s what we do now.

Check out the Rotello Group and follow their discoveries on their Facebook or Twitter page

Aaron Gervais 

I’m a composer of “classical” music. I write on commission, mostly chamber works, vocal music, and staged pieces (opera). I work primarily with acoustic instruments, although I also use electronic and mixed media elements on occasion. My music primarily gets played in North America and Europe. Most people would consider what I do to be avant-garde, but basically I just write the music that I’m interested in hearing. I’ve also done a fair amount of private teaching as a percussionist (though less so in recent years), I blog and write actively on musical topics, I’ve led music ensembles/organizations, and I’ve held a range of non-musical jobs. I’m lucky though that I’ve always been able to work in creative fields with forward-thinking people, regardless of the discipline. I’ve never done the barista/bartender, starving-artist-type jobs, and every job I’ve had has done something positive for my musical career.

As a kid I was always drawn to music. My mom tells me I was pulling out pots and pans to drum on them from the time I could crawl, and not just once or twice—this was one of my favorite activities as a toddler. Naturally, I bugged my parents to let me play the drums when I was old enough to talk. They put me in piano, hoping I would forget about the drums, but I kept at them until they acquiesced when I was in 3rd or 4th grade.

From then on, I became a very serious student of percussion, seeking out the best teachers I could find. I quickly gravitated to jazz, which was my first love. In my early teens, I started writing music. I didn’t think of it as composing, I thought of it as a way to get to play the music I wanted to play. After high school, I attended jazz college, then took an extra year to do the composition option they offered.

Gradually I found myself composing more than playing. I transferred to a full B.Mus program at the University of Toronto, majoring in jazz, but after a few months I knew I would be happier as a composer. At the end of my first year there I transferred into the composition program and I never looked back.

Around the end of my undergrad, I started to have my first career successes. These continued throughout grad school, and I won a number of awards, attended music institutes, and did the other things young composers are supposed to do. Following my graduate degree at UC San Diego, I went to Holland for an extra year of study, where I became quite ill and had to drop out. I spent about half a year recovering under medical care. Prior to then I always assumed I’d end up in academia, but during my convalescing I realized I didn’t want to be in school anymore and wasn’t interested in an academic career.

This posed a problem because most composers survive by working “day jobs” as university professors. There are, however, notable exceptions, and I figured the challenge of not falling back on academia would force me to find a solution like that.

I have, but wow, it has been a hell of a journey! And it’s not over yet. When you’re in a field that does not fit well with mainstream economics, you either need to relegate your work to hobby status or you have to blaze an entrepreneurial trail. I chose the latter, which means I’ve learned a lot about networking, the value of relations, how to be self-disciplined, how to organize my time, and numerous similar skills. I’ve learned that you need to develop the talents that come naturally to you, outsource the stuff that you can’t do yourself, and work around the clock. I gradually started getting up earlier and earlier and I’m usually up these days by 4:30am to get it all in (I felt more than a little smug when I learned Barack and Michelle Obama do the same).

I’ve also learned that the journey is the end goal. Today you’re earning a living on your commissions and grants, great! Next year might be a dry spell and you have to get a job. You just keep at it, and keep trying to do it smarter, more effectively. All the while, you want to grow as an artist, to create work that you’re proud of, that will change history. Composing as a career isn’t about modest goals. You have to want to change the world, otherwise why would you sacrifice so many other comforts?

So in summary, becoming a composer or following any other vocation that is not financially rewarding is a process of self-discovery that never ends. I didn’t “get there” because there is nowhere to get to. I’m constantly going somewhere, and trying to enjoy the journey as much as possible.

People become composers because they have a vocational drive to become composers. There’s really no other explanation. I like to work independently, I need creative tasks, I don’t mind details or meticulous work, and I’m a control freak. Those are some of the requirements to be a composer.

Beyond that, the existential, self-discovery aspects are rewarding, if often difficult. I feel like I have a truer outlook on life than many people. My friends describe me as having a certain wisdom.

Somehow though, liking being a composer seems the wrong question to ask. The truer question is, why haven’t you quit? Being a composer is very tough, there are innumerable obstacles, and the rewards are few and far between. The people who keep at it have had numerous opportunities to say, “You know what, this isn’t worth it. I’d doing something else.” But we don’t… That’s the true test of if you’re a composer or not.

I wanted to be a geneticist. I saw a show on genetic engineering on TV around 8th grade and thought it was the coolest thing, changing the DNA of plants in order to make them more resistant to pests or environmental conditions. But in high school I had terrible biology teachers and that completely killed my love of science, at least in the career sense.

Joy Gugeler

What do you do? 

I am a substantive editor of literary fiction for adults and teens and Canadian non-fiction, and teach editing, publishing, and media studies at 3 Canadian universities. I also host a radio segment called Books & Bytes, oversee a literary magazine and online portal, and produce a chapbook series. 

How did you get there?  

Though in high school I’d written agonizing poems, then a column for the local paper, and finally long expository letters home from travels abroad in the summers, it wasn’t until I’d completed a journalism degree at Carleton that I knew the love of reading and writing was less in the news and more in the arts. I was fine-tuning my media literacy so that it fit my aspirations.

Ironically, the ticket to capturing the esprit of reading as a career lay not in the printed word at first, but in radio features and the bi-weekly on-air program I founded interviewing Canadian writers of fiction and poetry called “Write On.” After 3 years and hundreds of authors behind the mic from Michael Ondaatje to Carol Shields, I learned that where there’s an author there’s an editor and publisher close on her heels, and the show opened several doors that knocking couldn’t have.

The show lead to working on the editorial boards of Quarry and Arc, two national literary magazines, reviewing books weekly for the Ottawa Citizen, Vancouver Sun and the Globe and Mail, partnering with the national librarian on a monthly panel on CBC, and when one of my interviewees informed me that his press was looking for an Associate Publisher, I crashed its Christmas party at the Chateau Laurier Hotel and was hired the following week. The sound of literature had lead to the practice of actually making it.

Once I caught the publishing bug, I was infected forever – for 15 years I worked in-house as an acquisitions and structural editor of primarily fiction for adults and young adults at 4 Canadian presses (Quarry, Beach Holme, Raincoast, ECW) and my respect for the intellectual gymnastics that goes into creating those spell-binding books only grew as did my gratitude for the privilege of working alongside the talents – Michael Crummey, Bill Gaston, Terence Young, Adam Schroeder, Patrick Friesen, Norma Charles, Andrea Spalding, Julie Burtinshaw, Beryl Young and so many others. So much talent, so little time :) 

Why do you like it?

An abbreviated list of the “value-added” benefits of the study and creation of literature reveals all the characteristics that make it my true passion Literature offers us the world around us and worlds we’ve never seen or even ventured to contemplate. It empowers us to silently and individually challenge the proscriptive power of inherited ideas. It creates a private space in which to escape, imagine, muse, and feel while offering a safe site for experimenting with identity. It gives us the ability to fashion a context for our own experience and to communicate with the past. It familiarizes us with the legacy of those who have come before and allows us to commit what is of value to personal and cultural memory. Literature prepares us to recognize ourselves as unique individuals, but also to build community as a member of a family, culture, tribe, or nation, and as a citizen of the world. It teaches us to make sense of our lives through narrative and to identify and test belief systems while believing in the magic of words. 

It offers us choice and gives us pleasure, power and the ability to train ourselves as visionaries. It allows for an active rather than passive role in the interpretive process, a creative act that is a revolutionary tool in the fashioning of independent minds. It accepts every reader and offers immersion, focus, quiet, and resistance where needed. Literature retells history and underlines the reader’s role in both sustaining and extending it. It connects us to the stories of our childhood and of our family while inspiring us to make our own new story. It creates a path from one author to the next and convinces the reader she has the right to follow in the footsteps of those who have come before her. 

The books that have done this for me are too numerous to list by name, but each new day brings a new literary discovery so the stories eventually speak to each other and speak for me and to me, not to mention all the attendant media that surround them – radio, film, music and theatre among my rivalling passions – layer and enrich these literary experiences in different forms for it is all STORY. My media world also obviously involves the Web as a platform for all these genres and a place to find others who share their allure, as sokanu.com is now, but in the end both literature and media is like mercury on a table, beading, morphing, and reconstructing in a way that is both slippery and fascinating. I would be voiceless without it and I can’t think of anything else I’d rather spend my days midwifing, indulging, and exploring.

When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?

Many of us begin our love affair with books as children – being read rhymes or tall tales before bed; discovering a secret realm in a wardrobe, a hobbit hole or a behind a garden gate; staying up late with a flashlight  and illicit comic under the sheets. 

Who among us hasn’t escaped through the portal of a book, emerging only to select a new title and re-immerse once again into that seductive realm where the writer’s imagination meets our own. 

This is a shimmering place where we can be lost to the world we know, but found in a new one, recognized there in a way we often aren’t outside those pages. This is the moment a reader is born, but for me, also an editor.

As much as I loved the company of others, the company of characters was equally compelling and often drew me to quiet corner, the crook of a tree branch, or the tent pole of a fort to sneak a read. When at 11, I entered and won a contest at the local library by reading 100 books in a single summer I knew the passion had well and truly become an obsession. The prize? Lunch and an interview with Vancouver writer W.P. Kinsella, famous for his title Shoeless Joe optioned for the film that became Field of Dreams.Though he doesn’t likely remember my precocious questions, the exposure to a “real live author” made a lasting impression - for a time I wanted to be one, and then in my 20s I wanted nothing more than to work with them. 

Editing and publishing books for youth inspired a project that returned me to those halcyon days of my own childhood when I would have wanted nothing more than to go to “book camp,” a place where I could talk, read, and write fiction with others who shared the same sweet affliction. So in 2000 I launched the inaugural summer Canadian Book Camp for 100 young adults 11-13 with the help of Janice Douglas at the VPL and Suzanne Norman at SFU. 

I’d surveyed summer camp offerings - sports, the outdoors, performing arts and technology – but hadn’t come across the perfect fit for the budding young reader or writer who kept diaries, wrote and/or illustrated their own imaginative stories, created homemade novels and feverishly devoured works by their favourite authors. We wanted to offer a fun workshop that took them seriously and excited, motivated, and celebrated young readers and writers while exposing them to the contagious thrill of discovering good books. The camp would offer field trips, interactive sessions with well-known authors, editors, and illustrators, a gala reading of campers’ works, and a freshly-minted edition of young authors’ excerpted in an annual anthology. 

This camp was for enthusiastic readers and eager writers who love writing, who have questions about the process, who want their work recognized - in short it was for people who feel the need to read (and write)! Through it I have met children who “meditated with their muse,” who said “I used to be bullied for reading on the playground, now I’m with 99 others just like me,” who were so troubled they had not spoken for over a year and then suddenly did when they met their favourite author at the camp and felt heard – these stories are inspiring and haunt me in the best possible way. Now more than a decade and over a thousand campers later, it has been duplicated in Toronto, Brantford, Orillia and anywhere someone has taken up the challenge to “steal this book camp” and adapt one of their own from our Book Camp Starter Kit. 

While the camp allowed me to be a child again, I also returned to the classroom as both student and teacher, doing a PhD in Communications and Publishing and teaching these skills at SFU, Ryerson and VIU. In my thesis, I proposed, like Swift, to outline a modest proposal for the uses of literature. While it did not propose a satirical solution as Swift did to the famine in Ireland (eat the babies), it did propose to satiate a reader’s hunger for imaginative fare by consuming literature (varied, relevant, and of excellent quality) that provides the nourishment to grow a child’s dreams from fantasy to reality. After all, I was living proof.

Derek McLean

What do you do?

I am a Fundraising Consultant, working with not for profit charitable organizations. In that role I work with clients to help them: do Strategic Planning (particularly with respect to fundraising); develop a 12-, 24- or 36-month fundraising plan; conduct a feasibility study which tests what they believe their Case for Support is and estimates what level of possible support might be available to them in their future capital campaign; and, run a Capital Campaign. In the latter instance, my preference is that the client actually learns how to run, and actually does run, the campaign so that in the future they can do the work and take ownership for themselves.

How did you get there?