Lauren Cerand is an independent public relations representative and consultant in New York. Her clients are a purposefully eclectic mix of creative professionals and organizations, and she specializes in generating initial buzz and building sustained attention for projects and individuals. The Village Voice included her in its "Best of New York" (2004) issue, and interviews with her can be found at 52 Projects, Conversational Reading, Emerging Writers Network, Litpark, TayariJones.com, and on the Hip Tranquil Chick podcast. She was recently quoted in Time Out New York in a piece on "cultural gatekeepers in the literary world," and at Mediabistro on "juicy little secret[s] of blogging" and "project-based PR." Her provocative essay on the evolving publicity landscape, "This is Not a Love Song," appears at Buzz, Balls & Hype.

She is often asked to share her innovative perspective on publicity and has spoken to audiences at the 20th Annual Independent and Small Press Book Fair, Book Promotion 101, Mystery Writers of America, NYU's Center for Publishing, The (Downtown) Omaha Lit Fest, Penguin UK (video clip), Word of Mouth, Virginia Festival of the Book, Women's National Book Association, and next at the Pilcrow Lit Fest in Chicago (May 22-25), the Nebraska Summer Writers' Conference (June 14-15), and the Backspace Writers Conference in New York (August 8). This summer (July 1 -14), Lauren will teach "Innovative Publicity Basics," an online workshop that costs twenty dollars and is open to all.

Her projects in 2008 include publicity campaigns on behalf of organizations such as Barnes & Noble (for the "Upstairs at the Square" series) and the Goethe-Institut New York, as well as the authors Janice Erlbaum (Have You Found Her; Villard/Random House, February), Rudolph Wurlitzer (The Drop Edge of Yonder; Two Dollar Radio, April), Min Jin Lee (Free Food for Millionaires; Grand Central Publishing, April), and Roxana Robinson (Cost; Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June). In 2007, she publicized authors Gayle Brandeis (Self Storage, Ballantine), Jeffrey Frank (Trudy Hopedale, Simon & Schuster), Dallas Hudgens (Season of Gene, Scribner), Anne Landsman (The Rowing Lesson, Soho Press), Min Jin Lee (Free Food for Millionaires, Grand Central Publishing), and Jean Thompson (Throw Like a Girl, Simon & Schuster), and Barnes & Noble's "Upstairs at the Square" series, est. 2006 (bn.com/upstairs).

Lauren compiles "The Smart Set" for MaudNewton.com, and muses on art, politics and style at LuxLotus.com. She is the vice chair of the board of directors of Girls Write Now, "a nonprofit volunteer mentoring organization that has been matching bright, creative teenage girls from New York City's public high schools with professional women writers in the community since 1998," and a member of the board of directors of The Writers Room, "founded in 1978 to provide emerging and established writers, working in any and all literary genres, with affordable work space in New York City." She is a graduate of Cornell University (B.S. in Industrial & Labor Relations, 2001).

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