Each year, the University of Washington Press welcomes an acquisitions fellow to join our team and gain experience in academic publishing. Made possible by generous donor support, the fellowship provides early-career professionals with hands-on experience in acquisitions, opportunities for professional development, and a chance to contribute to the future of university press publishing.

In our Q&A below, outgoing acquisitions fellow Dandi Meng shares about her time at the press, what she learned, and the projects that will stay with her.

Tell us a bit about your background and what drew you to university press publishing.

I was born in Beijing but grew up in the Seattle area and went to college at the University of Washington. In undergrad, I became aware of the world of university press publishing through some of the books I was assigned in class, but I only had the vaguest understanding of how it worked. When I started my PhD in English literature at UCLA, I went in pretty confident that I didn’t want to go for the tenure-track professorship route, because I always felt like more of a generalist than anything else. At the same time, I really enjoyed academia and I wanted to stay proximate to it in some capacity even after I finished my degree. I had a few editorial-type jobs throughout grad school, and as I was looking for jobs after graduating, I saw that UW Press was hiring for the acquisitions fellow position—a perfect training opportunity. Working in university publishing has enabled me to stay engaged with academic research while also learning about new things all the time!

What does an average day as an acquisitions fellow look like?

There really isn’t such a thing as an “average day” in acquisitions, which is part of what makes it so fun. Depending on where we are in the season and the specifics of the projects we currently have underway, I might be helping the editors prepare memos for meetings with our colleagues or faculty advisory board, doing research for possible peer reviewers, or answering author questions about preparing their manuscripts for submission. I am also sometimes asked to do special side quests (which I always relish!) like going down to the press’s archives to look for information about past publications, doing image research in local archive, or going into the libraries on campus to look for a book.

Did you learn anything that surprised you about university press publishing?

One of the most mysterious things to me about academic publishing before I started working at the press was what an acquisitions editor actually does, since I think many of us who go into publishing imagine the author-editor relationship as an abstract exchange of ideas. In actuality, a lot of what acquisitions editors are doing is curating a line-up of books that makes sense for the press, cultivating relationships with authors, and keeping projects on track. Along those same lines, I was surprised by how much each press’ identity can differ. It’s not just a matter of what subject areas a press focuses on, but also that presses have different orientations toward and priorities within those subject areas.

What are some of the most memorable projects that you worked on during your time at the press?

Two projects that I spent a lot of time with were Eric Wagner’s Seabirds as Sentinels: Auklets, Puffins, Shearwaters, and the View from Destruction Island and Ramona Bennett Bill’s Fighting for the Puyallup Tribe: A Memoir. I typically do not get the opportunity to read our books in full before publication, but the timing worked out nicely for Eric’s book. I read the entirety of a close-to-final draft and helped brainstorm some ideas for the title and copy. I’m also on a bit of a bird identification kick now, which the book no doubt helped along. For Ramona’s book, I did original image research to help illustrate the author’s incredible life as an activist and leader. It was amazing to see how she took part in some hugely important moments in history, like the Fish War and the Trail of Broken Treaties caravan, but she was also just a regular Seattleite who frequented the same thrift store that I go to today.

Thanks, Dandi, for sharing your experience!

Applications to the fellowship program are now open through October 15, 2026. This temporary, full-time paid position is for entry-level professionals who want to gain acquisitions experience at a scholarly press. Learn more about the position.