Bay Area Women in Publishing and the family of the late Robin Seaman have announced seven winners of the inaugural Robin Seaman Award, which honors women and nonbinary people in Bay Area publishing who demonstrate a commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. The award advances the mission of BAWiP, a volunteer-run and nonprofit networking organization.
Seaman Award recipients include Sara Fan, marketing associate at the University of California Press; Feather Flores, editor at Atheneum Books for Young Readers; Nusrah Javed, senior marketing manager at Hay House Publishing; Katryce Lassle, senior publicist at the University of California Press; Mikaela Luke, marketing coordinator in the children’s division of Chronicle Books; Raya Rahman, editor and publisher at Guba Publishing; and Bella Roberts, an assistant literary agent at Idea Architects.
Seaman co-founded BAWiP with Charlotte Abbott, Anne Kubek, and Kelly Peterson in 2012, and the organization has grown to more than 500 members. Throughout her career in publishing and at the technology nonprofit Benetech, whose digital library makes e-books accessible to visually impaired readers, Seaman was a staunch proponent of accessibility in publishing. The Book Industry Study Group honored her with a 2016 Distinguished Service Award for her work on its Quick Start Guide to Accessible Publishing. After her death in 2019, BISG recognized her with a posthumous Industry Champion Award for her advocacy around disability and reading access.
BAWiP and the Seaman family will distribute $20,000 annually among award recipients, who are chosen based on their DEI efforts and their plans for professional development at conferences and programs. According to Abbott, the funding is being allocated according to the scope of each applicant’s proposed use of funds and financial needs with most receiving around $3,000.”
