About Our Team
Faculty and Staff
Manuela Soares
Director, Lecturer
As Director of the Pace University Press, Soares works with editors on a variety of academic journals. Well-known for its studies of Virginia Woolf and medieval literature, more recent additions to the Press list of publications include journals on acting, comics, philosophy, and psychology. As Director, Soares reviews new submissions and oversees the operation of the Press and its staff. Soares is also the Director of the MS in Publishing program at Pace.
Erica Johnson
Associate Director
Erica Johnson is a Professor of English at Pace University. She is the author of several books including Caribbean Ghostwriting and, most recently, Cultural Memory, Memorials, and Reparative Writing. She enjoys the teamwork of editing books and has co-edited The Female Face of Shame and Jean Rhys: Twenty-First-Century Approaches with Patricia Moran, Memory as Cultural Capital with Éloïse Brezault, and Wide Sargasso Sea at 50 with Elaine Savory. She has published widely in the field of literary studies in such journals as MFS: Modern Fiction Studies, Biography, JNT: Journal of Narrative Theory, Contemporary Women’s Writing, The Journal of Caribbean Literatures, Anthurium, Meridians, and Woolf Studies Annual.
Wairimũ Mũrĩithi
Graduate Assistant
Wairimũ Mũrĩithi is a first year MS in Publishing student from Nairobi, Kenya. She is a freelance writer, editor, curator, educator and researcher, with work appearing in The New Inquiry, Down River Road, Making a Feminist Internet (Africa), Ja. Magazine and others. She is an avid zine reader, and she is one half of the zine-making collective, no sweetness here, and is currently working on “A Manifesto Against Resilience.” She has a BA in English and Economics, and a Masters in English, with a particular interest in postcolonial crime fiction, queer African literature and speculative futures. She loves to make kombucha and pickles, bike around the city and claim that she’s working on a novel. She is currently trying to figure out how to keep her plants alive.
Rachel Smithline
Graduate Student Aide
Born in Connecticut, Rachel Smithline remembers writing at an early age in a sparkly Barbie notebook full of stickers. She received her BA in Anthropology from the University of New Hampshire. While there, she was one of the founding members of the Anthropology Club and a participant in the Undergraduate Research Conference (’18). Since then, she has been a bookseller, a literary assistant, and now a graduate student studying Publishing and Writing. She looks forward to joining the team and hopes to one day use the experience to build a publishing imprint for diverse voices.
Aleaha Reneé
Graduate Assistant
Aleaha Reneé is a first year graduate student in the M.S. in Publishing program working towards a career in magazine publishing. She is from Shelby Township, MI and graduated from Michigan State University (MSU) with her bachelor’s in marketing April 2021. While at MSU, Aleaha served as a staff editor and writer for s campus magazine called The Current and authored a blog entitled The Face Of.
After her time at Pace University, Aleaha hopes to one day become editor-in-chief of a magazine, an author, etc. In her free time, you can find Aleaha surrounded by her dearest friends, painting, reading the latest Sarah J. Maas book or binge watching “New Girl” for the billionth time. Aleaha is looking forward to working with the staff at the Pace University Press in order to strengthen her skills within the industry.