Moira Egan is the Community Relations Manager for the Barnes and Noble at Astor Place in New York City. She has produced an evening with poets from the Rebel Angels anthology as well as readings with Kiran Desai, Ann Mohin, Clive Barker, Dorothy Alison, Junot Diaz and Edmund White.

Monster.com: What does a community relations manager do?

Moira Egan: Seventy percent of my job is setting up store events, organizing the space, writing introductions and welcoming writers. The events are an hour long and there's a lot of administrative work beforehand: ordering books, signs, publicity, dealing with authors' special needs. Most writers are easy to work with, some are a genuine pleasure. I also do follow ups after the readings: how many people are there, how many books have sold, how the crowd responded, was the author pleased, was the publicist pleased, was it appropriate for my location.

Mc: What kind of events do you hold at Astor Place?

ME: Astor place is the furthest downtown and we are taking on a downtown personality. We get first time novelists and lots of poetry -- that's why I'm here. And we also do alternative events -- gay and lesbian writers, cutting edge writers who wouldn't do well in other places. We often host the "Discover New Writers" program, designed to showcase new (not necessarily young) writers to people who might otherwise not know about them.

Mc: What is the remaining thirty percent of your job?

ME: Community outreach. I work closely with Poets and Writers. We have done a couple of publishing seminars for the public, teaching writers about what happens when a manuscript goes to a publishing house. I'm right around the corner from the Public Theater, and since Barnes and Noble gives corporate support to them we work with them on a grassroots level. We participate in their street fair in September and display posters for their upcoming shows in our windows.

Mc: How do you compete in New York where there are so many literary events going on at the same time?

ME: We have a very strong author promotions department in the corporate offices. They deal directly with publicists and figure out which authors will be good at which stores across the country.

Mc: How did you get this job?

ME: I am a poet, and that's what I have been doing for much of my adult life. [To make money] I was temping at a law firm after Hopkins. I had that classic split life of holding down a day job and writing at night. A friend called asking if I'd like to be on a panel on Writers' Colonies and Conferences at the Barnes & Noble in Princeton, NJ. I get there and I'm talking to the woman running the event and it ends up that she went to and teaches at Bryn Mawr, which is where I went. So we bonded, we had this shared experience. After my panel she said "You presented yourself very well. Would you be interested in a career change?" So I had a preliminary interview with the regional community relations managers of the East Coast.

Mc: What kind of interview questions did they ask?

ME: Why would I be good? Did I understand it would be a lot of hard work, it isn't just a glamorous job of introducing authors at readings. Then I interviewed at a few of the stores and they liked me but kept telling me I wasn't quite right for their store. This is where persistence came in. I kept following up, writing thank you notes and making calls. One manager asked me which store I'd like to work in and I said Astor Place. He felt I was perfect for that store so they shifted personnel so that the opening was there.

Mc: Do the events at the bookstores increase the sales of books?

ME: Yes, usually the book will sell the night of the event and afterwards. It's also a way of supporting authors. Barnes and Noble is like the Ben and Jerry's of the book world, ex-hippies with a social conscience. They get behind events, they want to reach out to the community.

Mc: How are the salaries?

ME: I'm really not at liberty to talk specifics. An entry-level job could be as a bookseller, which is how my assistant started when he first moved to New York. If you have an interesting background, have run theater events or a reading series for example, you would be happily considered for an assistant CRC position. Salaries are quite competitive within the retail framework.

Mc: And the hours?

ME: There's flexibility. We've had an event almost every night in the past few months, so on those days I don't come in at 9AM, I work maybe 2-10 PM, 8-10 hour days. It's a challenging job.

Mc: What are the good and bad things about the job?

ME: [The bad things are] that I'm tired a lot, [the good things are] It's hectic, it's constant, some days I love the phone ringing off the hook, other times I need time to sit and reflect on the programming. I've recently set up a program with two teaching poets. They usually work in the South Bronx and do workshops with kids. The result is a mural put up in the projects. We've done a similar program with a local school. The kids came into the store, made their poems there and we hung their "murals" in the store. And we are going to be able to continue this project. We have the resources to do things here. And personally, I have a book that's ready to roll if anyone wants to publish it. It's a great way to network in the literary community. And it combines all the things I care about as a person.

Mc: I'd imagine you need to keep up on what people are interested in reading and discussing. What subjects are people buying books about?

ME: I believe there is increased interest in spiritualism due to the approach of the millennium. People are thinking about how the past will affect the future, and where we're going. There's also a greater interest in poetry.