Do you wish to be featured in the Two-Minute Interview? Would you like to learn more about one of your colleagues? Just answer the online questionnaire, or drop us a line at gazette@uOttawa.ca, or contact Melanie Rainville at 613-562-5708.
Marie Clausén, managing editor, University of Ottawa Press
What inspires you the most about your job?
As someone suffering from an incurable and highly pleasurable case of bibliophilia, it gives me immense satisfaction to be part of the process that brings new books into the world.
My work also provides me with ample opportunity to apply the wise old maxim that “life (or whatever is precious or meaningful in it) is in the details.” Whether fine-tuning the design of a book cover, discussing punctuation and word usage, or deliberating choice of type, I find myself in close and sometimes intense collaboration with the thoughtful writers, talented artists and intelligent editors who, like me, ascribe to that life-affirming suggestion.
What is your favourite pastime?
Reading (my request list at the library is hopelessly long, yet a new title finds its way onto the list almost every day!), writing (poems mainly), thinking and travelling.
What would your co-workers be most surprised to know about you?
Perhaps the fact that I have a pet snail that (now and again) sets out on fascinating perpendicular adventures!
You’ve just won a $1 million. What would you do?
Give a portion of it to all the people close to me who may feel themselves a few thousand dollars short of the life they deserve; buy myself a house with a big fireplace, uneven floorboards, a claw foot tub, low, beamed ceilings and a view of some impossibly bucolic landscape; and then, spend a few months travelling before settling down in front of my own wood fire with a pile of books, a pot of coffee and a notebook.
Where do you see yourself in five years?
The great beauty of life is that it can take you anywhere. However, I would very much like to spend the rest of my working life in the whimsical, glamorous and creative world of publishing. Perhaps I will find the courage to found a publishing house of my own one day ...
