Photo by Jennifer Leczkowski

Alum Discovers Love of Publishing

When Kelli Chipponeri began her college career, she never imagined she would someday be writing SpongeBob SquarePants books. Chipponeri (BA, English, ’98) had planned to be a teacher, but after several years at CSU, Chico, she realized her vocation was “in books.” While she enjoyed her time here immensely, she says, “It wasn’t until I got involved in the Literary Editing and Publishing Certificate program that I really focused on school.”

Chipponeri took the focus she discovered at Chico on to a summer at the Denver Publishing Institute and then to New York, the center of the U.S. publishing industry. She found a job at Simon & Schuster as an editorial assistant in children’s books. Her goal had been to work in adult trade fiction, but when she interviewed at Simon & Schuster, she was enchanted by the “colorful, bright, engaging office” and thought, “This looks like a fun place to work.”

Chipponeri has been in children’s publishing ever since and is now the senior editor at Running Press Kids in Philadelphia. She is responsible for books from acquisition to publication, including selecting illustrators, editing manuscripts, writing cover copy, and working with sales and marketing. She is also sometimes responsible for writing. While at Simon & Schuster, for example, she wrote several SpongeBob SquarePants and Bob the Builder books.

The work she did in the Literary Editing and Publishing program prepared her well for the varied requirements of her career, says Chipponeri, “especially in learning to produce things like mockups or dummies to present my ideas. The printing classes and the design classes were also extremely helpful—not so much because I work in production or design, but because it helped me with the people who do.”

Anna Harris, Public Affairs and Publications