Who's Who

Quirk Books publishes innovative and buzzworthy books that entertain, amuse, and inform.

Founded in 2002, we publish books that are objects of desire and delight--in the categories of pop culture, humor and gift, horror, sci-fi, and mystery, food and drink, parenting, pets, history, crafts, reference, and of course, "irreference." We publish 25 new titles per year, in print and digital formats.

We are best known as the publishers of the international best-seller PRIDE & PREJUDICE & ZOMBIES and as the creators of the best-selling WORST-CASE SCENARIO SURVIVAL HANDBOOK series—but we do so much more.

Read on to learn all about the team here at Quirk.

Brett Cohen President & Publisher

Brett likes his vodka on the rocks, his meat on the grill, and his Sundays on the couch watching football. As President & Publisher, he likes Quirk’s projects to be as creative as possible, the P&Ls to be on budget, and sales to exceed expectations. He is an author and active member of the Association of American Publishers (AAP) Trade Executive Committee. Additionally, he currently serves as Board Chair for Tree House Books, a literacy center in Philadelphia.
David Borgenicht CEO & Owner

Dave is the founder of Quirk Books and the creator/co-author of the wildly successful Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook. His passions include live music, tennis, embarrassing his children, and the Marx Brothers. Favorite Non-Quirk Book: The Princess Bride, by William Goldman. "No ever one said life is fair. It's just fairer than death, that's all."
Jane Morley Project Editor

Jane brings a variety of traits and talents to her work as Project Editor, including scarily neat handwriting and a knack for spotting extra spaces between words. She has an affinity for grammar that dates to elementary school, when she was introduced to the semicolon; it remains her favorite punctuation mark. She also loves running, crossword puzzles, breakfast, and power metal.
John J. McGurk Vice President, Digital & Print Production

A former comedian and a graduate of the Second City Writers Conservatory, his greatest claim to shame is foisting the character “Abraham Lincoln, Naked Superhero” on a terrified public. Father of two, John successfully coaxed his wife into naming their first child after George Carlin, which was tricky since their first child is a girl.
Mary Ellen Wilson Executive Managing Editor

Mary Ellen Wilson has worked in educational and scholarly publishing and definitely prefers the quirkiness of Quirk Books. A self-professed wall flower, she enjoys sewing sachets of lavender, starting sweet-pea seeds on her windowsill, backyard birding, and analyzing paintings and architecture. If you spot a typo or factual error in Quirk's books, please write to maryellen [at] quirkbooks [dot] com. Merci!
Nicole De Jackmo VP, Publicity & Marketing

Nicole called NYC her home for eight years where she spent her time enjoying Greek food, beer gardens, & working at Simon & Schuster. She now happily calls Philly her home and has learned how to properly order a cheese steak, pledge her allegiance to Philly sports—but refuses to eat scrapple. E-mail Nicole (nicole@quirkbooks.com) if you want to review our titles or feature our authors.
Mr. Pringles

Quirk met Mr. Pringles while visiting with paper vendors in South America, and we all fell in love with his witty personality. Today, Mr. Pringles is an integral part of Quirk’s daily operations; he can be reached via e-mail with concerns about overdue payments. He is the only one who can help you with such issues, so don’t try to get in touch with anyone else, please.
Mandy Dunn Sampson Production and Sales Manager

Mandy is a compulsive organizer and list maker from Virginia. She has a master’s degree in Book Arts and Printmaking. In her free time between book logistics and motherhood, she draws comics and prints, bakes pies, and plays the accordion.
Andie Reid Associate Art Director

Andie grew up watching Star Trek and picking blueberries in her backyard in the Berkshires. She went on to study art history in Montreal and live in New York before finding her way to Quirk's design department where she can indulge both her geeky and culinary inclinations. She likes proper k er n in g, baking bread, robots, bike rides, and her cat, Neko.
Katherine McGuire Senior Manager, Subsidiary Rights & Licensing

When she's not fielding requests to translate or license Quirk books, Katherine is usually either drinking coffee, solving crosswords, or trying to make friends with her neighbors' cats. She once won over 200 free burritos for the entire New York office of her former employer, Oxford University Press, where she also antedated the term "riot girl" in the Oxford English Dictionary. Katherine has previously worked at Soft Skull Press, Penn Press, Pine Island Camp (where she happily spent 5 summers with no electricity or running water), and as the temp who wrapped all the Christmas presents going out from the Chanel corporate offices in 2005. Want to translate or license a Quirk book? Write to her at katherine@quirkbooks.com.
Rick Chillot Senior Editor

Rick has written and edited for magazines, books, newspapers, web sites, videos, gleepnorks and who knows what else. Topics range from health and wellness to science to true love to catastrophe to ghouls to that thing, you know what I’m talking about. He likes to write, draw, eat, and travel through time.
Megan DiPasquale Director of Finance and Operations

Megan started off as a Mathematician out of SUNY Plattsburgh. She then left her small home town in the Adirondacks and headed to the city of brotherly love. Once here she began to specialize in accounting and obtained her MBA from Temple University along the way. Combining her love of books (from J.K. Rowling to Toni Morrison) and numbers she feels right at home at Quirk Books. When she’s not balancing the books and tending to the office’s needs, she enjoys traveling the world, making every genre of food from scratch, and taking in Philly museums and restaurants.
Moneka Hewlett Vice President, Sales

In lieu of a formal biography, Rick Chillot has created a webcomic detailing the origins of Moneka. Enjoy.
Kate Brown Associate Sales Manager

Kate's early professional ambitions were dashed when she was politely informed that the Justice League was not hiring. Instead, she applied her uncanny abilities of alphabetization and speed-reading to several years of bookselling. When she's not supporting Quirk's pursuit of truth, justice and the Ameri--err, she means great books and fabulous sales, she studies Brazilian jiu jitsu and yells dramatic theory at pro-wrestling shows.
Molly Murphy Junior Designer

Molly grew up on the Jersey Shore and spent her childhood eating boardwalk pizza. She received a BFA in Graphic Design from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia before moving to New York and designing books for St. Martin's Press. She's now back in Philadelphia happily working for the Quirk design team and is never ever going back to New York. When she's not designing books, Molly spends her time petting other people's cats and breaking her glasses in mosh pits. She is the proud single parent of a sourdough starter.
Kelsey Hoffman Publicist & Marketing Manager

After falling in love with the UK, Kelsey moved to Oxford in pursuit of her Master’s in Publishing. Two years, one degree, and countless pubs later, she returned to New Jersey and landed her first publishing job in New York, before eventually making her way to Quirk Books. When not talking about books, Kelsey enjoys traveling, watching various sci-fi shows, and snapping photos for her Instagram (@tehkelsey). E-mail Kelsey (kelsey@quirkbooks.com) if you want to review our titles or feature our authors.
Christina Schillaci Assistant Digital Marketing Manager

Christina is the voice behind Quirk's social media channels and editor-in-chief of the blog. She graduated from Rowan University with her M.A. in Writing and joined Quirk in 2016. She loves weekend cooking projects, Cape May in the winter, and her dog, Rocket. Say hi on Twitter @quirkbooks!
Ivy Weir Publicist & Marketing Manager

Prior to joining the Quirk publicity and marketing team, Ivy was an award-winning librarian and has spoken about libraries and pop culture at venues nationwide. A Philly native, she enjoys reading comics, dog spotting, and drinking too much coffee. E-mail Ivy (ivy@quirkbooks.com) if you want to review our titles, feature our authors, or are a librarian or educator interested in our titles or receiving SWAG for your library or classroom. If you are a blogger who would like to review our titles, please click here to learn more.
Elissa Flanigan Designer

Elissa is a native New Englander who came to Quirk shortly after graduating from Philadelphia University with a Bachelor of Science in Graphic Design Communication. When she’s not designing Quirk’s ads, posters, buttons, tote bags, calendars, postcards, catalogs, blog posts, trading cards, coasters, bookmarks, and animated holiday greetings, she’s answering to distorted variants of her name, searching for new ways to eat potatoes, or hoping someone will recognize her geeky jewelry.
Rebecca Gyllenhaal Assistant Editor

Rebecca was raised by a pair of historians in the annex of a castle-turned-museum, which explains a lot. After earning an English degree, she moved to South Philly and made peace with the possums in her basement. Before finding her way to Quirk, she worked in marketing and publicity at Jessica Kingsley Publishers and read for the Adroit Journal. Unfortunately, she is not a well-rounded person and her only hobbies are reading, writing, and building book towers.
Aurora Parlagreco Senior Designer

Aurora grew up on Long Island, went to school in Pittsburgh, and returned to NYC to design children's books before making her way to Philadelphia. She can usually be found in a used bookstore, watching baseball, searching for the city's best ice cream sundae, or hanging out with her cross-eyed cat, Harriet the Spy.
Jhanteigh Kupihea Editorial Director

Jhanteigh wanted to be a book editor ever since she was ten, when she read the acknowledgments page for Carrie by Stephen King. She graduated from Columbia in 2008 with a B.A. in English and has edited commercial fiction and non-fiction at divisions of Penguin and Simon & Schuster until she joined Quirk in 2018. She’s an obsessive listener of podcasts, follower of horror and true-crime, visitor of indie bookstores, lover of food and design, devotee of Seattle sports, and watcher of movies. (She watches at least one a day.) She commutes to Philly from Astoria, Queens, where she lives with her husband and her cat, Buffy.
Alex Arnold Senior Editor

Alex Arnold grew up in Upstate New York reading every book available, obsessing over baseball and 90s boy bands, and trying to convince her friends to dress up as the Little Women characters with her for Halloween. A lifelong devotee of the books she fell in love with as a kid, she moved to New York City after college to pursue a career in children’s book publishing. She worked at Simon and Schuster and then HarperCollins Children’s Books, where she acquired and edited books for kids and teens. She joined Quirk in 2018. She currently lives in Brooklyn, NY with her husband and a fluffy, codependent dog named Toast, where she can often be found trying to outsmart airline algorithms to get a deal on her next trip.

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