Manuela Soares is the Director of the MS in Publishing program and Director of the Pace University Press, having been a full-time faculty member and Associate Director of the Pace University Press since 2004.
Prior to teaching, Soares had a 30-year career in the publishing industry, working in both books and magazines. Most recently, she was Managing Editor for the Scholastic Trade Book division (overseeing eight hardcover imprints and the publication of the first five Harry Potter books). Before that, she was a Senior Editor at Rizzoli International.
As the Director of the Publishing program, Soares oversees the development of curriculum and works closely with faculty and the Advisory Board to expand and support this unique and successful program.
As Director of the Pace University Press, Soares works with editors on a variety of academic journals. Well-known for its studies of Virginia Woolf and medieval literature, more recent additions to the list of publications include journals on acting, comics, philosophy, and psychology.
She is a member of the Editorial Board of Springer-Verlag’s Publishing Research Quarterly, where some of the Graduate Theses papers from the program have been published in abbreviated form.
Her own published works encompass magazines, journals, and books including: The Joy Within with Joan Goldstein (Simon & Schuster), One Hand Clapping with Rafe Martin (Rizzoli), Butch/Femme (Crown Publishing), Scholastic Bookfiles: A Reading Guide to A Wrinkle in Time, Heart Throbs: The Best of DC Romance Comics (pseudonym Naomi Scott, Fireside Books), ESP McGee and the Dolphin’s Message (pseudonym Jesse Rodgers, Avon Books), “The Purloined Ladder” (Journal of Homosexuality, V.34, Issue 3-4), among others. In 2011, she contributed a short short story to the anthology Sudden Flash Youth, (Persea Books). In 2013, she wrote a cookbook with artist Jeanne Betancourt, Farm Stand Fresh.
An avid photographer, her photographs are in private collections and have been used for the covers of three books of poetry, various blogs, and included in several exhibitions.
Professor Soares holds a BA degree in English from Rutgers University and an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College.