Stacy on a trip to Korea in 2019.
about Stacy
The background
I grew up on a small farm in western Illinois, and when I wasn’t wandering the fields with my pony or reading up in a tree, I was walking to the library in town after school to spend as much time as possible there before my stepmom got off work and I had to go home to farm chores and homework. My mom and older sister instilled a love of reading in me, from reading aloud on Mom’s lap to my sister coming home from kindergarten to teach two-year-old me everything she had learned about the alphabet that day. From the time I could read Little Bear on my own to reading on the bus between dance team competition performances and beyond, my formative reading included every book ever written by Madeleine L’Engle (but especially A Wrinkle in Time), Stranger with My Face, Across Five Aprils, Anne of Green Gables, The Wheel of Time series, the Trixie Belden series, Garfield collections, and more. In the fourth grade, I wanted to be the smartest kid in the world, so of course that also meant reading the dictionary so I could know every word.
Nowadays my reading tends toward mystery (the Vera Wong series, the Finlay Donovan series), cozy fantasy (The Spellshop), middle grade and young adult fantasy, science fiction, and mystery, and more. “I could no sooner pick a favorite star in the heavens,” is how I feel about picking a favorite book.
The formal bio
Stacy Whitman is the founder and former publisher of Tu Books, the imprint of Lee & Low Books that publishes diverse middle grade and young adult novels and graphic novels. She is also the owner of The Curious Cat Bookshop in Winsted, CT, including the Curious Cat Bookshop Podcast. She holds a master’s degree in children’s literature from Simmons University. In 2013, Stacy founded the New Visions Award, which honors a new unpublished writer of color. Authors and illustrators she has worked with include Guadalupe García McCall, Yamile Saied Méndez, David Bowles, Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, Tony Medina, Kimm Topping, Anshika Khullar, Raúl the Third, A.M. Dassu, Olivia Abtahi, Axie Oh, G. Neri, Aamna Qureshi, Supriya Kelkar, and more.
She has also been mentoring writers in the Simmons University master’s of children’s literature writing program since 2012.
Prior to launching Tu Books, she was an editor for Mirrorstone, the children’s and young adult fantasy/science fiction imprint of Wizards of the Coast. She has edited elementary school textbooks at Houghton Mifflin, interned at the Horn Book Magazine and Guide, and was a children’s bookseller at Barnes & Noble (not to mention editing phone books and transcribing overland trails journals in college, typesetting college textbooks and the publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific in LaTeX at various points in time, freelance editing and copyediting; and writing, editing, and photography for Electrical Apparatus, the trade magazine for the industrial electrical motors aftermarket—as well as a small local paper in Stark County, Illinois). In her eclectic career, she has worked with a wide variety of writers, artists, and publishing professionals who taught her the gamut of the publishing industry, and she applies that every day no matter what part of the book industry she’s focusing on that day.
Stacy with her author, Axie Oh, in the Lee & Low offices around 2018, holding Axie’s books, Rebel Seoul and Rogue Heart.
What authors say about working with Stacy
Brandon Sanderson
“Stacy Whitman not only has a keen eye for editing, but has a deep understanding of the children’s market. I know this for a fact, since she was instrumental in helping me sell my first children’s book.”
Tiffany Trent
“Stacy was my very first editor, and I really couldn’t have asked for a better person to induct me into the world of publishing. It felt more like the book was a collaboration of ours rather than a tug-of-war as can so often be the case. I’ll always be grateful for her nurturing honesty and excellent editorial eye.”
Rebecca Shelley, writing as R.D. Henham
“Stacy was my first editor, and I feel very lucky to have worked with someone who understands my writing so well. She has a knack for seeing the true story inside a manuscript and helping an author bring that story up to its highest potential. She is a great communicator, and is positive and enthusiastic to work with.”