Kathryn Juergens
VP, Publisher
Kathryn Juergens has worked at Timber Press for nearly twenty years, starting as a Sales Assistant and taking on various roles in sales, marketing, and management. As Associate Publisher, Kathryn managed the campaign for Timber’s first New York Times bestseller, Nature’s Best Hope by Douglas Tallamy. As Publisher, she balances a background built on business and sales with an editorial vision of Timber that aims to continue a 50-year history of award-winning publishing in the garden category, while also expanding our presence in the nature and science categories. Recent books Kathryn is immensely proud to publish include Something in the Woods Loves You by Jarod K. Anderson, Pansies by Brenna Estrada, Poppy State by Myriam Gurba, and The Illuminated Book of Birds by Robin Crofut-Brittingham. Kathryn lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband, daughter, and a very scruffy Portuguese Water Dog named Augie.
Makenna Goodman
Executive Editor
For two decades, Makenna Goodman has acquired, developed, and edited award-winning and bestselling books with leading writers, horticulturalists, artists, farmers, cultural critics, gardeners, designers, scientists, composters, fermenters, ecologists, photographers, and more, for a variety of publishers and agencies. Notable books include The Art of Fermentation by Sandor Katz (winner of the James Beard Award and what the New York Times called “one of the 25 most important cookbooks of the last 100 years”), Pansies by Brenna Estrada, Love Letter to a Garden by Debbie Millman, Holler by Denali Nalamalapu, Poppy State by Myriam Gurba, US editions of Notes from an Island by Tove Jansson and Derek Jarman’s Garden, and a forthcoming garden book with Jamaica Kincaid. She acquires across a range of categories including gardening, art, horticulture, fashion, illustrated and graphic nonfiction, literary nonfiction, nature, and botany. Goodman grew up in California, the Southwest, and New York, and earned a B.A. from Wesleyan University. She lives and is based in Vermont.
Ryan Harrington
Senior Editor
Over the past fifteen years, Ryan Harrington has held editorial positions at the Overlook Press, W. W. Norton, and Melville House. He is now Senior Acquisitions Editor at Timber Press. In previous roles, he has edited New York Times bestselling non-fiction such as David K. Johnston’s The Making of Donald Trump and Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing, alongside fiction ranging from the literary, to the comic, to the experimental. At Timber Press, Ryan’s interests include literary meditations on the living world, such as Jarod K. Anderson’s Something in the Woods Loves You, the intersection of nature and culture, as in Ashia S. Ajani’s Tending the Vines, and everything having to do with birders and birding.
Born in Cleveland, and raised in Phoenix, he graduated from Reed College in Portland, Oregon, and is pleased to be frequently visiting his Portland-based imprint, despite living and working in New York City.
Naomi Ruiz
Editor
Reading the Spanish translation of Astrid Lindgren’s Ronja Rövardotter—her last book and a love letter to nature—introduced Naomi Ruiz to literature’s ability to connect humankind to the natural world, and a kaleidoscope of interests and professional experience eventually brought her to Timber Press. The thread running through Naomi’s entire career has been a desire to support people connecting to each other, to what lights them up and empowers them, so it was natural that Timber’s mission to connect humankind to the natural world resonated so strongly with her. As an editor by day and artist by night, Naomi loves books that accessibly foster that connection through art-led viewpoints and practices. It is Naomi’s editorial dream to amplify BIPOC voices (especially from places and cultures like her naturally lush home island, Puerto Rico), explore the connections between animals and humans (bonus if they’re humorous or earnest), and pursue anything to do with the skies above, alternative ways to understand nature as seen in herbalism in a New Age context, and vindicate misunderstood or displaced nature. Naomi’s main, overarching aim as an editor is for people with casual or even timid curiosity to find their aligned invitation to a deeper understanding and exploration of the natural world through books.
Nick Dysinger
Assistant Editor
Nick Dysinger started working at Timber Press as an Office Assistant in 2020 and is now working as a part of the editorial team as an Assistant Editor, working closely with both the acquiring and managing editorial teams. He has helped shepherd many manuscripts and art programs into the production phase. Nick’s literary interests span across classic to contemporary fiction to non-fiction, and he is interested in pursuing works that combine philosophical inquiry with nature-related topics and anything that sparks viewing the natural world in different and unique ways. He earned a B.S. from the University of Oregon and has lived in or around Portland for eight years.