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| Patra McSharry Sevastiades |
She served as Editorial Director at Rosen Publishing Group in New York and later as Executive Director of the Duluth Library Foundation, championing literacy and civic engagement. A widow of Greek Orthodox priest Fr. Philemon Sevastiades, she now lives in Duluth, Minnesota, with husband Dean Casperson, their blended family of seven children, and nine grandchildren. Her latest work, co-authored in 2025, is Grace Unbound: The Sacred Activism of an Orthodox Bishop, a compelling narrative of faith-inspired social justice through the life of Bishop Demetrios C. Kantzavelos.
EN: What was your role with the Duluth Library Foundation and what is the foundation's mission?
Patra: I worked at the Duluth Library Foundation from 2011 to 2021. In the last several years of my time there, I was the executive director. Before that, I was an independent contractor, a consultant trying to make things happen. The mission of the Duluth Library Foundation was to expand the Library's capacity to purchase materials and offer programs beyond what the city budget allowed, and I'm happy to say we were able to accomplish that owing to the graciousness of generous donors and the success of pursuing grants.
We had an endowment, of course, which grew from $700,000 at the time that I started, to $2.1 million by the time I left. That felt pretty good. Obviously, that has to do with how money is invested and how the market is doing, but it also reflected remarkable bequests and gifts from people with a heart for the library and books. It gave us a capacity to help the Library, as did several fundraising events and campaigns that we ran each year. It was a joy to see the librarians happy with expanded resources and especially to see children and adults enjoying something that the Foundation made possible.
EN: What prompted you to ask Santa for a dictionary when you were six?
Patra: Why did I ask Santa for a dictionary when I was six years old? I liked language. I thought it was fun knowing stuff. I think, too, that to the child I was, a dictionary embodied the idea that life is safe, not chaotic. A dictionary means that a word has a meaning, or meanings, that are predictably the same.
EN: You have published four books for young readers on diverse themes including The Vietnam War Memorial and the Hoover Dam. What inspired you to tackle these projects and what did you learn from writing books targeted to 8-10 year olds?
Patra: The reason I wrote the children’s books that I did was because there was an opportunity. Those books needed to be written to round out a series, and I was willing, and I needed to earn more money. It was a way to accomplish those things. It was fun to learn how to write for a certain age. It forced me to simplify my thoughts and boil them down to their essence. I also like learning facts and the often-surprising histories behind each topic.
EN: Your career has taken you from studying Russian in Moscow to editing in Washington, DC, and advocating for literacy in the Midwest. How have these diverse experiences shaped your perspective on resilience and adaptability, especially for women navigating multifaceted careers?
Patra: Looking back, there seems to be rhyme and reason to it, but at the time, it certainly didn't seem like it. Life is full of twists and turns, and you follow your heart and your intuition. Opportunities popped up in moments I didn't expect them. Things happened, and I had to pay the bills. A door would open and I'd walk through it, and unexpected things would happen on the other side of the door. I suppose I don't see that as being unique to women, or to parents. As a parent, I found, part of you has to pay the bills for your children’s sake, they're depending on you. It's not just you or your spouse, but these little faces looking up at you. Necessity and resilience both played a part.
I'm grateful there has been so much good in my life. So many doors did open, and there was a kind of a through line that brought me from being a six-year-old wanting a dictionary to studying Russian in college because I loved the work of Dostoevsky, then from translated Russian manuscripts to mainstream publishing, through publishing to my first husband, and from that to raising money for the library, which in turn brought me to my second husband, himself a book collector.
I would say this: keep your eyes open. Look for the next opportunity. I often kept my nose to the grindstone and didn’t look up enough to see what else might be possible. I wish I'd done more of that.
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| L to R: Patra Sevastiades, Catherine McSharry and Bishop Demetrios C. Kantzavelos |
Patra: My interest in the power of story and storytelling and shaping it got started when I was working outside of Washington, DC, for Delphic Associates, a “beltway bandit” that secured government contracts seeking information during the Cold War about Soviet science. My boss, Gerry Guensberg, owner and founder, had a vast and growing collection of resumes from Soviet scientists who had immigrated to the United States. The US government might want a paper on Soviet helicopter technology, and Jerry would find a scientist to write it and would submit a proposal. Once the contract was secured, we would commission a paper and then have it translated.
As a rule, the scientists are brilliant but usually not great writers. We would have it translated into English and then work with the author to improve it, working by phone and also face to face. We added historical background and political context and made sure the text was clear to the general reader. Then we published it. I discovered that I loved the process, and I loved working with authors.
EN: Can you share a little more about your career as an editor?
Patra: In my experience as an editor, the magical part happens when you help an author see with fresh eyes how their manuscript reads. I remember one particular moment when I had the pleasure of working with Robert Olen Butler, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author. He submitted a short story to our publication, Icarus, a quarterly of international writing, modeled after Granta but for young adults. It was excellent. As was my norm, I wrote a letter complimenting the author on the story and suggested only one small change, to clarify a slightly confusing image of the movement of a fish.
Then I called him, as previously agreed, and he was angry at me. He had a point: he was a Pulitzer Prize-winning author. Who was I to suggest a change to his story? I listened to him, and when he was done venting, I said, “I understand what you're saying.” Then I asked, “May I tell you how I understood the sentence as it is written?”
I read the sentence and told him what had confused me: I couldn’t tell if the fish was in the boat or outside of it. That had made me stop and wonder.
“My concern,” I told him, “is that if a reader stops reading because something is unclear, they might just stop reading and put the book down. I don't want them to put the book down. I want the text to be clear enough that they'll keep reading.”
He listened and perceived that it was in his interest that I made my suggestion, it wasn’t about my ego. “Tell me how you would change it,” he said. I read it to him with my suggested change. “Oh, that's all,” he said. “That's fine.” He was a lovely, gracious person.
That was a great experience. It was and is a pleasure to work with other people and come to a good resolution. It is satisfying to see good ideas get better.
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