If you had met Deeba Zargarpur ten years ago, she would have been working in the medical field. Now, she’s a senior editor at a Big Five publishing house, finding herself in surreal conversations with the likes of Christopher Paolini (Eragon) or Malala Yousafzai (I Am Malala). What caused this dramatic shift?
After growing up in Virginia, Deeba earned her psychology degree from Drexel University and began applying her knowledge to that field. But her passion for books—long kindled through avid reading, fan fiction writing, and even finishing a novel—eventually pushed her to pursue a career in publishing.
Her family's protests of, “Are you crazy?” calmed when she got an editorial assistant job with a company they’d heard of—Disney Publishing Worldwide. She then spent several years working for a book packager, generating ideas for their projects. In March 2020, Simon & Schuster hired her, where she works as an editor for their Books for Young Readers imprint and as a senior editor for their Salaam Reads imprint. She hopes to stay with them forever.
Deeba is also an author. Her debut book, House of Yesterday, a YA novel, was acquired during the pandemic in 2020 and published in 2022. She received the news of the sale while alone on her couch, socially distanced from friends and family. Yay, Covid!
Her second book, Farrah Noorzad and the Ring of Fate, a middle-grade novel, was published last year but was actually written first. Deeba writes in whatever genre best suits the story she wants to tell and doesn’t begin writing until she feels strongly enough about something to know she can sustain the emotional thread for a whole novel.
Deeba’s advice for aspiring writers includes:
Be stubborn. You only fail if you give up.
She knows this firsthand, having spent two years querying before landing an agent and enduring more than 250 rejections before selling her first book.
As long as writing brings you joy, do it.
Write what you love, but keep the market in mind.
Study books in your genre—both the good and the bad—to see what makes you want to keep reading or not.
Of the ten children's book imprints at Simon & Schuster, only Salaam Reads, an imprint for Muslim writers, is open to reading unsolicited, unagented work. She says they have found gems in the “slush pile,” so if you’re a Muslim writer with a Muslim story, this would be a great opportunity for you to get your work before a big-five editor.
She credits great critique partners with spurring most of her growth as a writer. There’s no substitute, she says, for having others read your work and offer feedback and then doing the same for them.
Her editorial bio states that she aims “to acquire commercial books that empower young people from diverse backgrounds. She is always on the hunt for stories that inspire a sense of magic and wonder, plot lines that challenge traditional assumptions about morality, and strong character arcs that redefine what it means to be the hero of your own story.”
Check out her website at deebazargarpur.com.
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