Michelle Chen
Michelle Chen is the Senior Acquisitions Editor for composition & rhetoric, folklore, history, and polar studies. She welcomes a diverse range of submissions, from standard academic texts to book series to regional trade. Michelle especially enjoys reading book proposals that challenge assumptions, encourage new ways of thinking about current and historic injustices within our fields, and promote intersectional understandings of equity beyond diversity and inclusion. She joined UPC in 2025, having previously acquired at Bloomsbury Academic (Music, Film, Media, Politics), Palgrave Macmillan (Politics), and Oxford University Press (Music). Michelle has a BA in English Literature (2012) from NYU, and currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Skylar Cooper
Skylar Rowyn Cooper (They/He) is an Editorial Assistant for the University Press of Colorado. They are a University of Wyoming alumni with a BA in English and a minor in communication and a minor in gender and women’s studies. He is also the former editor-in-chief for Casper College’s student literary and arts magazine, Expression, and has two AA degrees from Casper College in human communication and English. They have been passionate about English, cultural rhetorics, literature, journalism, social justice, and editing their entire life. He is grateful for his opportunity to support others in his community through his work on the Casper City Council LGBTQ+ Advisory Committee.
Laura Furney
Laura Furney is Assistant Director and Managing Editor of the University Press of Colorado. Since her publishing career began, she has worked in the business, acquisitions, manuscript editorial, and production departments. A Boulder native, Laura returned to Colorado after receiving her BA in Fine Arts from the University of Texas at Austin and her MA in Art History from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She is an avid supporter of the local arts community.
Tina Kachele
Tina Kachele is Book Designer at the University Press of Colorado and has been designing books for over two decades. Before joining UPC, she worked as a freelance book designer/packager for university presses, trade publishers, and art museums, and previously served as the Design Manager for the University of New Mexico Press. She has a BA in Art & Art History from Princeton University and an MFA in photography from the University of New Mexico. She has received numerous awards for book design and production from the American Association of Museums, the Association of University Presses, and Publisher’s Association of the West, among others. She grew up in New York and New Jersey and since graduate school has made her home in Albuquerque with her family.
Daniel Pratt
Daniel Pratt started at the University Press of Colorado as a Marketing and Editorial Intern in 1998. Hired on as the Business Assistant in 1999, he has worked for UPC’s editorial and production departments for fifteen years, the last eleven of them as Production Manager. He has been involved in the production of more than 500 books, and his work has been recognized by the PubWest Annual Design Awards, the National Outdoor Book Awards, the Southwest Book Design & Production Awards, and the Colorado Independent Publishers Association’s EVVY Awards.
Darrin Pratt
Darrin Pratt is Director of the University Press of Colorado, a position he has held since 2000, and a past President of the Association of University Presses (2016–2017). Prior to becoming Director, Darrin was the Assistant Director and Sales & Marketing Manager at University Press of Colorado, and he has also held editorial, marketing, and sales positions at Ohio State University Press, Indiana University Press, and Columbia University Press. Darrin has a Master’s in English Literature from Indiana University, and he obtained his undergraduate degree from Kenyon College in his home state of Ohio.
Beth Svinarich
Beth Svinarich is the Marketing & Sales Director at the University Press of Colorado. She has a BA in English from Fairfield University and a MS in Publishing from Pace University. Beth began her career in Special Markets at Workman Publishing in New York but eventually could not resist the urge to return to her native state. She moved back to Colorado and feels very lucky to have found a home at UPC, where she's been running the Marketing and Sales Department since 2008.
Chiquita Taborn
Chiquita Taborn is Business Manager at the University Press of Colorado. She originally joined UPC in 2020 as Executive Assistant to the Director. She has a BS in Business Administration from College of New Rochelle and an MBA from California State University, Los Angeles. Chiquita began her administrative career in her alma mater’s Registrar’s office and has worked in industries from nonprofits to law firms.
Laura Walker
Laura Walker is the Marketing and Sales Manager for the University Press of Colorado. She worked for University of Alaska Press in many different capacities for over ten years before UAP joined UPC in 2021. She has a BA in geography and a MS in natural resource management—both from the University of Alaska—and currently lives in Fairbanks with her family.
