I first heard of Chouette as a submission that an editor was interested in pursuing. Art usually enters the equation after a book has been acquired, but one of the changes that the pandemic brought was that the meeting where editors pitch prospective books became a meeting that the whole team attended. I remember that the strange and compelling premise caught my attention more than almost any other submission discussed in those meetings; I was excited to hear that we would be publishing it and then, several months later, that I would get to design it.

The Removed was a book that I unexpectedly loved reading. The manuscript arrived in mid-March, about a week after we transitioned to working from home and about a week into my pandemic-induced reading slump. The story of one family’s pain interspersed with the voice of a Cherokee ancestral spirit sounded interesting, but not interesting enough to distract me from reading the news, figuring out how to use the VPN, and whether or not it was okay to go to the grocery store.

I carried around the manuscript for weeks, and quickly approaching deadlines forced me to finally put my phone down and settle in with my binder-clipped pages and a pen. I couldn’t put it down.

The Orchard happened to be the first book I was ever asked to design for Ecco. My Art Director, Allison Saltzman, emailed me the manuscript shortly after I accepted the position on staff with a note that she wasn’t expecting me to arrive on my first day with designs, but that it would be great if I could start reading. The stakes felt very high!