Stephanie brings an abiding love of literary classics, guilty-pleasure genre fiction, fanfic, and children’s books to her work at Third State Books. She spent many years in digital marketing and operations, first as a strategist for advertising clients at Google, then leading e-commerce teams and managing multi-million-dollar advertising budgets for retail brands such as ModCloth, Bebe, and Serena Williams’s eponymous fashion label. Early in her career, she sifted through slush piles as an intern at Penguin Putnam and edited a mathematical children’s book for Charlesbridge Publishing, so working on TSB feels truly like coming full circle for her. Stephanie will always be a SoCal girl at heart, but she’s making the best of the perpetually foggy weather in San Francisco with her husband, Garry, and their two sons.

Charles has spent nearly three decades moving forward the principles of authentic representation, equity, and narrative change in publishing. He previously served as Senior Editorial Agent at Serendipity Literary, the largest agency in the U.S. specializing in writers of color. He also served as Associate Publisher at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, where he oversaw the publication of forty titles per year and established an award-winning, best-selling line of children’s books. Before MoMA, he was Editor in Chief at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, where he launched the Museum’s first publishing imprint and magazine.
Charles lives in Harlem with his wife, Julia, daughter, Charlotte, and mini schnauzer, Eddie. Born in Seoul, he immigrated to America with his family at the age of seven.

Emily was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawai'i. She studies English and Literary Arts at Brown University and has previously interned at Hawaii Public Radio. In her free time, you can find her playing taiko, propagating plants, or cooking with her Instant Pot. 

Prerna Chaudhary [prair-nah chawd-ree] graduated with a degree in Communications from the Fashion Institute of Technology. Through her experience in podcasts, radio, newspapers, and now books, she hopes to explore gender and race performance, nationalism in various diaspora, and borders on the internet. She enjoys reading memoirs, speculative fiction, and coming of age in your twenties books. In her free time, you can find Prerna painting or doing fiber arts.