Marie Arana
When I came from Peru to the United States at the age of 10, the only Hispanics I saw in my school corridors in New Jersey were my brother and sister. At Northwestern University, I didn't meet one Latino student. I worked hard at becoming an American, and by the time I went abroad to graduate school (British University of Hong Kong), I considered myself more red-white-and-blue Yankee than anything else. After a long career in New York book publishing -- I was vice president and senior editor at both Simon & Schuster and Harcourt Brace -- I came to The Washington Post in 1992. To my great wonderment, drawing on my Hispanic heritage was actually something The Post encouraged me to do.

I'm convinced that, as editor of Book World, I have one of the great jobs at this newspaper: I read books, review them and edit. It's an opportunity to engage in the world of ideas, interpret that world for a great metropolitan center's readership and rub shoulders with some of America's most dynamic journalists along the way. I've been urged by the executive editor and front page features editor to write long, broad pieces about the burgeoning Hispanic middle class, Cuban immigration, the deaf world and many other issues of abiding interest and no small importance.

Somehow in the course of my career, I've raised two children. I am finishing a book for a publisher. To sum up: What makes this a great newspaper to work for is that it is constantly looking for ways to improve itself. That means, of course, that work becomes a combination of challenge and opportunity.

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