11 English Students Selected for Competitive Penguin Random House Publishing Mentorship

UMD students secured more than half of the available spots in the program.

By Chelsea McLin M.A. ’19

Eleven students in the Department of English are gaining early access to the publishing industry through a competitive mentorship program at Penguin Random House (PRH), one of the world’s largest book publishing houses. 

The paid mentorship, which runs from November 2025 to April 2026, pairs participants with professional production editors and offers real-world experience bringing books from manuscript to final print. Mentees, who work remotely, apply their copyediting and proofreading skills and receive professional feedback on their work.

"I'm thrilled for these students because the mentorship program puts them in an excellent position to get future work in book publishing," said Ruth Anne Phillips, a senior lecturer in the English Department who helped Maryland students gain access to the program. “Penguin Random House essentially spends six months training them. Publishing jobs are very competitive and therefore hard to come by, and this program was designed to help create a new generation of editors and proofreaders."

Phillips, a freelance proofreader and copyeditor for PRH, learned of the publisher’s mentorship program through a professional contact and proposed UMD’s involvement to Kate Juhl, senior program director in the College of Arts and Humanities, in 2024. Juhl became a leading advocate for the partnership, while Phillips worked with PRH staff to develop curriculum and prepare resources aligned with industry expectations. 

UMD was invited to participate in the highly competitive PRH Production Editorial Mentor Program beginning in Fall 2025. UMD students account for more than half of the participants in this year’s cohort.

Students who were selected into the 2025–26 mentorship program are enrolled in an ARHU internship class that extends from late fall through the spring semester. Future mentees will enroll in an English internship class. However, preparation for the program begins well in advance. Most students selected as PRH mentees have taken Phillips’ course on proofreading and copyediting or have completed a similar self-guided summer course provided by Phillips on Canvas. This curriculum ensures that students are prepared for two rounds of rigorous assessment as part of the PRH Mentorship Program application.

Senior Victoria Cleveland ’26 said that Phillips’ copyediting course provided practical preparation for the program.

“Professor Phillips had us work on actual manuscripts that she was working on,” she said. “We learned about querying, or addressing the author in the comments of the documents, and how to effectively use Adobe Acrobat, the software that Penguin Random House uses.”

Sarah Bean ’26, an English major who is also majoring in Russian and international relations, credited Phillips with giving her an “editor’s eye.” 

“We went over a lot of grammar rules that I feel like a lot of people just don't think about but are really common for people in publishing, like using ‘each other’ versus ‘one another,’” she said. “Someone that's not working on a manuscript isn’t going to think about that, but Penguin Random House really wants you to find those types of details and make sure that they're correct.”

Currently, multiple students in the mentorship program are working on slugging projects, a quality control practice in the publishing industry in which editors compare two versions of a manuscript—one draft marked with edits and a clean version with those edits incorporated. Bean is slugging her first manuscript, a book co-authored by an Israeli and a Palestinian peace activist. 

Phillips said the PRH program is especially unique because students receive feedback on their work, a rare opportunity in the publishing industry. 

Sarah Rupprecht ’28, an English major with a minor in business, said she values her mentor’s openness and willingness to answer questions. “They want to train us,” said Rupprecht. “They want us to understand what we’re working on, which is great.”  

PRH staff also host workshop sessions on different aspects of the industry and engage students directly to foster positive interest in publishing. 

Students will work on bigger projects this semester as they gain new knowledge from their mentors. Although PRH does not guarantee a job at the completion of the program, the ultimate goal is to offer industry insight and experience that can help launch their careers. 

“I hope to go into the publishing field. I think this is a standout opportunity to be able to see if this can actually be a career that I could pursue,” said Chioma Opaigbeogu ’25.

The following UMD students are part of the mentorship program: Sarah Bean ’26, Maylin Martinez Campos ’27, Victoria Cleveland ’26, Juliana Craven ’27, Madison Renee Dunn ’26, Amanda Montanez ’27, Chioma Opaigbeogu ’25, Paige Racine ’27, Anne Rong M.A. ’27, Sarah Anne Rupprecht ’28 and Nora Schobel ’26.