Contribute to the world in a lasting way.
Cherise Fisher is the Principal of The Scribe’s Window, a book development company committed to helping both fiction and nonfiction writers express themselves more clearly, more honestly, and more powerfully. She spent four years as the Editor-in-Chief of Plume, a trade paperback division of Penguin USA, and publisher of such bestselling authors as Ayn Rand, Leonard Maltin, Tracy Chevalier, and August Wilson. She started her career in publishing a month after graduating from Yale as the assistant to the Editor-in-Chief of Dell Publishing and then spent nine years at Simon & Schuster, where she built a strong list of fiction and non-fiction titles. She runs an Online Writers Group at AChapterAMonth.com and loves educating writers and literary enthusiasts across the country about the publishing industry. Her family is originally from Montserrat, and though born in New York, she considers herself a proud Montserratian. She is the mother of two beautiful young daughters and resides with them and her husband in lower Westchester County. (www.AChapterAMonth.com)
the interview
Cherise was one of the editors I met with when we were pitching my book, and I will never forget our meeting. While discussing the book, she told me she was reminded of her greatest epiphany by reading the material, and I asked her what it was. She gave me a very quick account of her epiphany she discusses in the video above. But it was what she told me later when I asked her how she works with an author that struck me. She told me, “This book will live on for 300 years. What we’re birthing here will live on for 300 years, I take that very seriously and the process is very important to me.” I was so moved by her words, I struggled to suppress tears in the middle of the meeting. I had never really thought about my work or anything we create here – letters we write, a painting we paint, a tree we might plant and nurture – in those terms before, as truly living on for hundreds of years after we’re gone. I was both awed by the possibility and fearful of the responsibility. About a month later, I asked Cherise if she would share her epiphany for the project even though I was with a different publisher because what she said meant so much to me. She’s so wonderful, she didn’t skip a beat. We filmed her interview in her office at Plume in New York City in the spring of 2010.
