Writing major Rebecca Brutus ('20) has been awarded a 2020-2021 Mellon University Press Diversity Fellowship. The year-long award began in June with an editorial position at the University of Chicago Press.
Rebecca was one of six fellows selected by six participating university presses: The MIT Press, the University of Washington Press, Cornell University Press, the Ohio State University Press, University of Chicago Press, and Northwestern University Press. These fellowships are funded by a grant awarded to the University of Washington Press from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation "to support the continued development and expansion of the pipeline program designed to diversify academic publishing by offering apprenticeships in acquisitions departments. This second grant builds on the success of the initial 2016 grant from the Mellon Foundation, which funded the first cross-press initiative of its kind in the United States to address the marked lack of diversity in the academic publishing industry.
At Ithaca, Rebecca served as senior nonfiction editor of the literary magazine Stillwater and as a tutor in the Writing Center. She worked for the Ithaca College Library and as a writing and social media intern at Buffalo Street Books. She was also involved with ZAP, a student-run volunteer program that organized panels to educate the campus community about diversity-related issues. Her enthusiasm for university press publishing was cemented during an internship in the marketing department at Cornell University Press.
Read the full press release here.