Mary Menzel is the Director of the California Center for the Book, a reading promotion agency affiliated with the California State Library and the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress. Mary is an avid reader of everything from horror stories to cookbooks, and she teaches reader’s advisory -- the art of matching readers with fiction and nonfiction that they’ll enjoy -- at UCLA.

Mary earned a B.A. in creative writing -- poetry from Stanford University, and she has a master’s of library and information science from UCLA. Before enrolling at UCLA to pursue her library degree, Mary volunteered in an elementary school in Los Angeles. A native of northern California, she has also resided in New York City and London.