Booklyn #2: Talking to Cathy de la Cruz

Senior Metadata Manager at Penguin Random House

Jamie Diamond

Apr 09, 2025

I’m excited to share my very first Booklyn interview featuring Cathy de la Cruz (she/they), Senior Metadata Manager at Penguin Random House.

In a couple of weeks I’ll be back in your inboxes with April book recs and events.

Read on!

Tell me a bit about yourself.

My name is Cathy de la Cruz. I currently live in Brooklyn and am originally from San Antonio, TX. I grew up as a voracious reader, and it never once occurred to me that I could work in publishing. I went to college far from home in Olympia, WA, so I could study creative writing and filmmaking, which were my two primary academic interests. And then I bounced around as I figured out what I was going to do. I briefly lived in Portland, OR, and in Athens, GA, and then I took a filmmaking internship in NYC. That was my first time in New York, in 2003, a very long time ago.

I ended up going to graduate school at UC San Diego for an MFA in visual art. And while I was there, I still did lots of writing in their amazing literature department, which had great people that I really admired such as Eileen Myles, Chris Kraus, Anna Joy Springer, Harry Dodge, and more. Even though I was getting an MFA in visual art with my concentration being filmmaking, I took a lot of literature and creative writing classes too.

I was also a teaching assistant for everything from postmodern literature to South Asian film studies to international films and fascism, which were through the literature department. The worlds of filmmaking and literature have always been important to me because experimental forms of storytelling are where my heart lies. I moved into LA after graduation and worked in media arts, education, and nonprofits, teaching kids and art making at Venice Arts. I eventually decided to go back to graduate school, this time for a creative writing MFA at the University of Arizona. After Arizona, I took a summer job in New York and it reminded me how much I loved it here and I decided to stay. I have been here ever since.

How did you end up working at Penguin Random House?

I was between roles from my standard academic or nonprofit roles, which I had the most experience in. I met with a recruiter who placed me in a copywriting role at Penguin Random House. It changed my life, and I ended up staying there and taking on a permanent role.

What do you do for Penguin Random House?

My full-time role is Senior Metadata Manager on the corporate metadata team. Most people don't know what any of that means, and that’s okay. For those who don't know what metadata is, it’s the information about the information. When most people think of publishing, they think of books and of editing those books. I work on the business side, which is thinking about How do we sell those books? How do we get those books to the people that want to read them? I work with an analyst and research how consumers are finding books. What search terms are they putting in engines that are leading to certain books, and which books are they actually buying?

We might realize through our research that, for example, for Mother’s Day, people are looking for yoga books when they search “Books for Mom.” So maybe we should look at our yoga books and not just the ones from 2025, but the ones from the last 10 or 15 years. Can we take those yoga books and then spruce up the copy so that it's a little more relevant? We figure out what's trending, but also what makes the most sense in terms of efficiency, because obviously we have a gazillion books and can’t do this manually one by one, so we’re looking for different patterns that we can then share with the rest of the company. I feel like I'm a little bit of a detective for selling books and how people are finding what they're looking for.

What do you love about working in the book publishing world?

I love being able to support art. I consider books art, and I love being able to help get other people's ideas out into the world and to the people that maybe need them the most. It’s very exciting when I hear someone talking about a book and I'm like, oh, that's one of ours. Or specifically, that's one that my hands have touched in some way. I love getting to be a tiny piece of that.

What do you love about living in Brooklyn?

Brooklyn is so big, but my neighborhood in North Brooklyn feels like its own small town. And I love that. I also love that in general in NYC, I run into people all the time from different parts of my life because people are constantly visiting New York, so I'm like, oh, I haven't seen you in six years, and now you're at this museum that I'm at. I love running into people. I know for some people that's their nightmare, but I really enjoy it. I love how I can just walk to so many great places, whether it's a coffee shop or a bakery or some weird hybrid gallery-design firm or whatever. I can’t imagine missing all the human connection I would if I were in a car all the time like I was when I lived in L.A.

What's your favorite local bookstore?

I love all bookstores, even the big chain ones for nostalgic reasons, but I really like McNally Jackson Seaport. I've gone to so many great events there, and their staff is so amazing. They’ve got just the nicest people planning their events and working behind the counters. The only reason I ever go to the Seaport area is for a cool reading or panel about literature at McNally Jackson Seaport.

What's a book you’re excited about?

You’re going to think I’m such a nerd, but I'm really excited about this book called Submersed: Wonder Obsession and Murder in the World of Amateur Submarines by Matthew Gavin Frank. I haven't read it yet, but it's such a specific niche book about things that have stuck in my mind, and someone did many years of research and wrote it! It’s biography, true crime, but also about nature, and so just everything about it I'm fascinated by. It's supposed to be a thriller about this DIY subculture. “Frank explores the origins of the human compulsion to sink to depth.” What? That's just so fascinating to me.

You’re also a writer. What do you write and what are you working on currently?

You and I met in a writing workshop, which is very cool. I've always loved writing, and I've published my writing in various places. I have essays in some print anthologies, and then I've got different things online that range from flash fiction and poetry to interviews and nonfiction essays. My MFA is in fiction, which I think is funny because in some ways I write fiction the least. Right now, I am primarily writing nonfiction, and I have about 140 pages of a manuscript, and I'm locking myself away all next week to finish the first draft of it.

I will just say it is in the world of memoir, and I'm figuring out is it more like personal essays or is it a more traditional memoir? The form could change a little bit as I edit it, because I think that I've written it as a straightforward memoir right now. But I think that some of my chapters can definitely be broken up into more personal essay type pieces. And I'll just say it deals with health, queerness, and sexuality.

What does being a DEI advocate mean to you?

This wasn't something I expected to necessarily do when I got into publishing, but as I started working full time, I was like, oh, there's some really cool initiatives to make publishing a more diverse space for people to work in and feel comfortable working in, and to diversify the actual books and authors that we are putting out into the world. There’s that great Toni Morrison quote that really sums it up where she’s telling her students, when you get these jobs that you've been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free someone else. That quote has always stuck with me.

I grew up in South Texas. I am Latina and queer, and publishing was never something that I thought that I could be a part of. And it's not because I necessarily felt excluded from it, but I just didn't know anyone who had that sort of job. It was very foreign to me, and it seemed kind of magical and aloof. And I thought, well, if I can make working in this world a little more accessible, whether it's for the people who are already here who maybe don't feel like they fit in, or for people who are interested in coming in, what can I do?

I'm a trained inclusion partner. The inclusion partners at Penguin Random House have gone through a lot of training to facilitate discussions around power and privilege related to racism, sexism, all sorts of isms. We’re not subject expert matters, but we help facilitate difficult conversations between coworkers.

I'm also a trained uncovering bias workshop facilitator, and it's been really interesting to work with people from all areas of the company. And I am currently a mentor for a college student who is Latina too and is interested in working in publishing. We planned a day where I took her into the office, and I'm a firm believer in people really visualizing the future they want and it having power to actually manifest. I'm that sort of extremely positive person, so I thought it was important to get her to the office to give her a picture of where she wants to be someday. I really want to share opportunities that have been shared with me. I want to make them possible for lots of different people. I’ve always been lucky to have wonderful people believing in me and supporting me in different ways.

Where can readers find you?

I have a website: www.cathydelacruz.com. It has links to my writing, my experimental films, my LinkedIn, and my Instagram page. If you play around on that website enough, you can find a link to a Bandcamp where I made music a very long time ago. I am definitely around if people want to reach out.

And this September in New York, I'm going to be moderating a panel at the Latinx Storytellers Conference which is really exciting. You can find out more here.