We were lucky to catch up with Amelia Possanza, And Brittani Hilles recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Amelia Possanza, and Brittani Hilles, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear the story of how you went from this being just an idea to making it into something real.

AP: This coming October marks our one-year anniversary in business together, so it’s a fun occasion to reflect back on how it all started. Over Labor Day last year, we went away together with our partners and one other couple (plus two dogs!) upstate. While sitting in the hot tub, reading a Meryl Wilsner novel, we started to talk about our dreams of uplifting queer authors and other marginalized voices through our publicity work. At the time, Brittani had already dipped a toe into the freelance world after over a decade in-house, and I was still in-house, but my work had shifted from primarily running book launch campaigns to managing several employees. I was jealous when I heard Brittani talk about how freelance allowed her to closely work with authors beyond just one book or one project. She could really think about their whole career, across books, and sometimes even across publishers.

When we got back to Brooklyn, I thought reality would set in, and I would happily return to my job. Instead, I found myself emailing Brittani’s professional account and asking her out to lunch. What started as a fantasy quickly became a reality as she created a new email address for me, we found an accountant, and set up a template contract for authors. I was lucky that Brittani had built such a strong foundation on her own. It turns out that our skills and interests are very complimentary.

We set a plan to hard launch the company in February and spent the intervening months getting ready. That meant signing up clients, from traditional authors to literary magazines to a publishing startup, and setting up social media accounts, taking meetings with agents and media contact, and, of course, printing business cards with our new logo.

To celebrate, we’re throwing a reading/party featuring many of our authors in December. At so many moments it has felt like our feet having been moving faster than our minds, so it will be really fun to take a moment and celebrate all that we’ve build.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

BH: Like every cliche I was an English major and loved reading books growing up, and so publishing seemed like a natural fit after college. I interned in every aspect of publishing, from a literary agency to editorial to marketing. Eventually, I learned that I like talking about the books the most, so publicity became a natural home where I can yap all day about books. After spending 10 years in house at St. Martin’s Press, Algonquin, and William Morrow, as a freelance publicist I can now make even more room in my calendar for unexpected calls, both from my clients and from the media, to talk about what we’re reading. Amelia’s story is very similar, except she was a Comparative Literature major.

Lavender PR creates full-service publicity campaigns for authors writing across genres, from thrillers to fantasy to memoir to romcoms to debuts. We focus on queer and feminist authors, and in our campaigns we strive to leave no stone unturned, from TikTokers to big NPR shows to small book clubs NOT run by celebrities to national newspaper reviewers to placing personal essays. We’ve also loved working with some literary organizations, from Lambda Literary to Amherst’s literary magazine, The Common, which will be celebrating its 15-year anniversary in 2025. In addition to passionately pitching our books and authors, we also prioritize author care, especially when it comes to demystifying the publishing process for first-time authors.

How’d you meet your business partner?

AP: Brittani and I were both working at different imprints of Macmillan when we met. She was at St. Martin’s Press, and I was at Flatiron. As it turned out, we were both working with the same author who happened to be publishing a book with each imprint. I was new at the company and didn’t know too many other people my age, so I reached out to Brittani under the guise of collaboration. We had hot chocolate together at Eataly, and while we did talk about our shared author for a bit, we also got into the challenges of getting media attention for authors in an every-changing media landscape, and of living in New York City as 20-somethings on publishing salaries. From that moment, I often turned to Brittani to get a margarita, gossip about books, and strategize about how to do our jobs better. I always admired how passionate she was about her authors, and her determination to get attention for them, even when it required a little bit of extra creativity and elbow grease.

Then, during the pandemic, we had to resort to margaritas in the park and talked a little more about her Tinder profile than our jobs. (She’s now married to her first Tinder date, so clearly we’re a great team there too.)

We still try to channel some of that energy at our meetings now, whether that means picking a decadent restaurant for a working lunch, like Olea in Fort Greene, or even getting a manicure as our “annual retreat.”

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

BH: As queer women who worked in corporate settings for over a decade each, we didn’t always get a say in which authors we worked with. Moving into freelance has allowed us to specifically work with authors whose audiences we know how to reach because of our own interests, personal experiences, and social networks. Our goal is to support authors who have new perspectives to bring to the marketplace and the conversation.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.lavenderpublicrelations.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lavenderpublicrelations/

Image Credits

Credit for both professional headshots goes to Becca Farsace. No credit required for the other images.