I recently had the delightful experience of meeting star FOPL volunteer, Zan McQuade. She welcomed me with such warmth, and her energy was so infectious, that I immediately want to know more about her. Zan (short for Suzanne) chatted with me whilst sorting books, maintaining a remarkable speed and demonstrating obvious experience. (I’m fairly certain she organized an entire box of books in the time it took me to locate one bin.) Due to time constraints Zan answered my questions over email. She beautifully expresses herself and I invite you to “listen” in:
How long have you volunteered with FOPL?
I’ve been volunteering every Monday night for just over 5 years.
What is your background? What do you do now? (You are clearly waaaaay too young to be retired)
I spend my days as the editor of the Living Language imprint of Penguin Random House. I also use my free time to translate Latvian fiction into English, write the occasional essay for various online publications, and a few years ago edited The Cincinnati Anthology. I’ve been working in publishing since 2000, and have loved books for far longer than I can remember. I grew up in this area, and moved back here six years ago after living for about a decade in New York.
I understand that you curate the Women’s Studies section, is there anything you’d like to highlight?
I only recently took over curating the Women’s Studies section, but was more than happy to since I spent so much time browsing it anyway. I always wished I’d taken more women’s studies classes in college, so helping to curate this section has been a little bit like choosing my own syllabus for my dream class on women’s studies. It’s a really interesting section for its breadth of topic: history, biography, feminist theory, spiritual books, even literature. And there’s never a lack of classic and modern feminist texts on our shelves: Simone de Beauvoir, Mary Wollstonecraft, Susan Faludi, Gloria Steinem, bell hooks, Betty Friedan, Nora Ephron, Gerda Lerner, Violette Leduc, Rebecca Traister, as well as a healthy selection of books on international women’s issues – it’s the perfect place to build your own feminist library. There’s also plenty for those who might not consider themselves feminists or be interested in theory: books on mothers and grandmothers, historical letters written by women, humor books, and gorgeous coffee table books featuring portraits of admirable women.
What are you currently reading?
I have a few books on the go right now: Joan Didion’s After Henry, Maggie Nelson’s Bluets, Sridhar Pappu’s The Year of the Pitcher. I’m also looking forward to reading Philip Pullman’s new book – The Book Of Dust. It might be cliche, but the older I get, the more I gravitate towards non-fiction, though I also really love a good literary novel. I love everything Joan Didion writes; I have an entire shelf at home devoted to her books, most of which I bought at the Friends Warehouse.