Guest Post from former student Carmen Clark

Read about Carmen Clark's awesome experience becoming a professional reviewer for Library Journal. She was in my class in 2020 and was inspired by the reviewing portion of the class. If any of you decide to follow along the same path, please let me know! It's fun and rewarding!

"The week we covered reviewing in class, I got inspired to give it a try and apply to Library Journal! In the application they asked for my general information, which genres I preferred and an example of a book I'd read in that genre, as well as two writing samples. I took the Kirkus style review I wrote for Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane, changed it to fit LJ's format, and wrote another review for The Flight Attendant by Chris Bohjalian. Once I submitted my application, an email arrived a couple days later letting me know I'd been accepted as a reviewer and an editor would be in touch soon with my first assignment.

I learned very quickly that "soon" in the reviewing world can mean weeks, which was the case with my first assignment. I waited almost a month. All I was given when the email finally arrived was the title, genre and the due date. The book came in the mail a few days later, which happened to be a couple days into quarantine, so I was thankful to have something to occupy my time. I reviewed The Silence by Susan Allott, who is a new author. I was especially nervous to write the review because I didn't care too much for the book. I wrote my review right away and then came back to it a couple days later to edit. I submitted it through a link from the original email. Library Journal uses a company called Media Source Inc. to facilitate their review submissions. I waited (impatiently) for word on if and when my review would be published--Library Journal contacts their reviewers if they don't agree with the submitted opinion, so no news was good news! I checked the website a couple times a week and finally saw it posted on Tuesday! It will also be in the May edition of Library Journal. I have already received my second assignment, this time in PDF form because of the COVID-19 restrictions. Doing this has been a great learning experience for me. I've been wanting to head down this path for awhile and for it to actually happen has been extremely surreal and exciting! I owe a huge thank you to Erin for mentoring me along the way!

Here's a link to my review for The Silence!

https://www.libraryjournal.com/?reviewDetail=the-silence"         - Carmen Clark