February 23, 2010: Publishing and Media: Breaking In

Sarita Varma, Director of Publicity, Farrar Straus and Giroux

Farrar Straus and Giroux is a leading publisher of literary fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Farrar, Straus and Giroux include a number of imprints: North Point Press, Hill and Wang, Faber and Faber, Inc. and Sarah Crichton Books. Sarita joined FSG in 1995 and has handled the promotional campaigns for a number of authors from Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winners such as Jamaica Kincaid, Scott Turow, Alice McDermott and Marilynne Robinson to media personalities such as Thomas L. Friedman, David Hare, Billy Corgan, Courtney Love and Dambisa Moyo, who was named in TIME magazine’s list of the 100 Most Influential People of 2009.

She most recently handled the multimedia campaigns for Colin Beavan’s NO IMPACT MAN, which was released concurrent with a documentary that debuted at the Sundance Film Festival and a highly trafficked blog of the same name, as well as a novel by the musician Nick Cave which was released to coincide with a number of his music projects. Forthcoming projects include the memoirs of President Jimmy Carter, Nelson Mandela and film director Danny Boyle, as well as a novel by Andrea Levy winner of the Whitbread and Orange Prizes.

Sarita is an active board member of the Publisher’s Publicity Association and served as a judge for the Loft Literary Center’s Minnesota Career Initiative Program in 2004. She is often invited to speak at the University of Michigan and New York University Publishing Programs and has been involved with programming at the Association of American Publishers. A graduate of Barnard College, she began her career in the trade publicity department at Oxford University Press where she handled PR campaigns for a number of noted academics. She resides in New York City.