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.

David Borgenicht President

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 Managing Editor

Jane brings a variety of traits and talents to her work as Managing 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 and 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.
Nicole De Jackmo SVP, Sales, Marketing, and Publicity

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.
Mandy Dunn Sampson Senior 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 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 Assistant Director of Subrights and Business Development

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.
Megan DiPasquale Vice President of Finance

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. Authors and agents, if you have a question on royalties, please write to megan [at] quirkbooks [dot] com
Kate Brown Sales Manager

KB grew up in Northern California and organized her childhood bookshelves by how well she thought authors and characters would get along together. After a decade working for independent bookstores helping to guide as many books OUT of stores as possible, she now works for Quirk Books helping to guide as many books IN to stores as possible. She is happy to argue with anyone that Quirk produces some of the most creative and beautiful books around, that John Cena is underappreciated in the pro-wrestling canon, that the character Leia Organa has even more emotional and mental fortitude than she’s ever given credit for, and that The Muppet Christmas Carol is one of the best book-to-film adaptations of all time.
Molly Murphy Designer

Molly grew up on the Jersey Shore and spent her childhood eating cheap pizza and being goth on the boardwalk all by herself. She received a BFA in Graphic Design from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia before moving to New York to start her career in publishing. After a few years in the Big Apple, Molly decided it wasn't for her and returned to her favorite city in the world. She now enjoys a variety of design-related duties for the Quirk team, standing in the back of basement shows with her arms crossed, and reading in graveyards. She is the proud single parent of a sourdough starter and a black cat named Neon.
Kelsey Hoffman Senior Publicity and 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 Tatulli 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!
Elissa Flanigan Designer

Elissa grew up on the South Shore of Massachusetts reading every book that she could get her hands on. As a toddler, she added her own spin to her book collection with crayon. She still enjoys drawing in books, but now gets paid to do it. She loves art, food, bright colors, trees, visiting the parks of Philadelphia, and finding new ways to eat potatoes.
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.
Jhanteigh Kupihea SVP, Publisher

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.
Ryan Hayes Senior Designer

Ryan likes Napoletana pizzas and 3rd-line two-way forwards. After a half-dozen years in San Francisco, he came back home for the change of seasons and the occasional soft pretzel (and hopefully, one day, a Stanley Cup parade). Always prepared, he keeps a stunt kite and an insulated growler in the trunk of his car. He wears many hats: primarily dad and husband, but also 59FIFTY's.
Jennifer Murphy Marketing Manager and Publicist

Jen Murphy began her career in New York working at HarperCollins before returning to her beloved hometown to join the Quirk team in 2019. Though she has many qualifying interests and hobbies, her inner Jessica Day battles a Daria Morgendorffer-like exterior—but it doesn't take much to draw her into a conversation about the finer philosophical points of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. E-mail Jen (jennifer.murphy@quirkbooks.com) or reach out on Twitter or Instagram if you want to review our titles or feature our authors.
Shaquona Crews Senior Contracts Manager

Shaquona’s publishing career spans time at Time Warner Book Group/Hachette Book Group and Princeton University Press where she’s worked in marketing, sales, and IP. This journey has allowed her Curb Your Enthusiasm-esque moments with a televangelist, a supermodel, a filmmaker, a Nobel Prize winner, and myriad Penn Station travelers. She is super-grateful to contribute to a fun and dynamic industry, and only uses her contract negotiation and reasoning skills for good (rather than just “pretty, pretty, pretty good”).
Jessica Yang Editorial Assistant

Jessica hails from California, where she grew up with a boba in one hand and many, many library books in the other. Once upon a time, she wrote puns for money in the mobile games space. When not taking #aesthetic photos for book blogging purposes, she can be found cultivating bok choy and baking bread with limited success.
Gabrielle Bujak Publicist & Marketing Assistant

Gabrielle likes a lot of things and dislikes very little. Retired ice cream cake decorator, occasional farmhand, and reminiscing library worker, she spent her childhood dreaming of fighting fires and her college days writing about Bong Joon-ho before he was cool. Now, she preaches the importance of dental hygiene; chats up books, movies, and comics via the Quirk blog; and legally climbs silos. Whether the legality of the silo climbing makes her more or less interesting is up for debate. Email gbujak@quirkbooks.com if you want to review our titles or feature our authors.
Kassie Andreadis Managing Editorial Assistant

Kassie grew up in a small college town, where she learned that she never wanted to be a teacher or a professor. Her love of books has led her to an English degree, to a job at her childhood local library, all the way to San Francisco (to work at No Starch Press), and to Quirk. Her less book-related hobbies include tabletop games, daydreaming about road trips, and referencing the Loveland Frogman whenever remotely appropriate.
Jess Zimmerman Editor

Jess has written a bunch of essays, some fiction, a high-profile opinion column, years of political journalism, a master's thesis on Neuromancer, and one and a half books, but still lives in fear of the Fun Bio. Mostly, though, she cannot be stopped from editing things, so here we are. Before coming to Quirk she was the editor-in-chief of the digital magazine Electric Literature, publishing essays and humor about books and narrative media. She likes dogs, skulls, mythical monsters, nonlinear stories, industrial music, large-scale immersive art projects, the old internet, and science fiction comedy from the '80s, and her most useless skill is reading Morse code (not a written language).
Zaakirah Lewis Accounting and Operations Assistant

Zaakirah hails from Drexel University ‘16 as an aspiring writer/businesswoman who advocates food, feminism, and free thought. She aims to be a vehicle for shared resources, financial literacy, and information dissemination that will remedy the plight of "the starving artist." Of starving, at all.

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