Meg Donohue Preuss, '00

I have no doubt that my comparative literature studies at Dartmouth ('00) helped me land my wonderful, first post-college job in the foreign rights office of International Creative Management's literary department in NYC. There, I supported a team of agents dedicated to finding foreign publishers for American authors and eventually managed translation deals in Eastern Europe and Greece. While the role fed my interest in contemporary literature, translation, and foreign cultures, and I really enjoyed working in publishing, I always knew that I wanted to be an author, not an agent. So I enrolled in Columbia University's MFA program in fiction. After I completed the MFA program I did every writing-related job I could get my hands on--from freelance writing for magazines and websites to writing resumes for job hunters--while getting married and starting a family and continuing to write fiction whenever possible.

I'm thrilled that HarperCollins will publish my first novel, How to Eat a Cupcake, in March 2012. So far, the book has also been sold to publishers in Germany (Heyne), Italy (Garzanti), and Poland (Proszynski). I'm now living in San Francisco, enjoying spending time with my husband and our two young daughters, and working on my second novel. www.megdonohue.com

On August 12, 2011 she wrote - I'm an alum of the COLT program ('00) my first novel will be published by HarperCollins this spring and I'd love to get the word out. :)