June 15, 2017 (New York) —We Need Diverse Books is pleased to announce the winners of the 2017 WNDB Internship Grants. In the program’s successful first two years, grants of $2500 were awarded to sixteen interns, with eleven eligible interns having gone on to full-time work in the publishing industry. This year, thanks to a recurring donation from the LJTJ Family Fund and a generous gift facilitated by fundraising by Inkluded, WNDB had nine $2500 grants to award, along with a metro stipend for each intern.

The following diverse publishing interns have been selected for the 2017 WNDB Internship Grants:

Parrish Turner – Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Rohini Verma – Simon & Schuster
Elizabeth Lee – Simon & Schuster
Rosie Ahmed – Charlotte Sheedy Literary Agency
Olivia Funderburg – HarperCollins Children’s Books and Greenwillow Books
Mercedes Padro – HarperCollins
Natassja Haught – Writers House
Tanu Srivastava – Puffin Penguin Random House
Santiago Montoya – Lee & Low

“Every year we have so many excellent applicants for the WNDB Internship Grants, it’s always difficult to choose from them,” said Linda Sue Park, Honorary Chair of the WNDB Internship Grants Committee. “This year was no exception. And as always we are gratified by our publishing partners’ commitment to this program. We hope it’s a seed for hiring efforts industry-wide.”