Our Team

Crystal Patriarche has an extensive 17-year background building a simultaneous career in both public relations and publishing, disrupting both the book and magazine industries. Early in her career, she led public relations strategy for Fortune 500 accounts at global high-tech public relations agencies Weber Shandwick Worldwide and Brodeur Worldwide. After leaving the high-tech agency world, which was mostly dominated by men, she turned her attention to working with and elevating women and female-focused brands. She spent five years as Editor in Chief and head of PR and celebrity partnerships for SheKnows.com, a start-up digital-only publisher for women.

Patriarche then started her own company, SparkPoint Studio, the parent company of SheBooks and sister imprints She Writes Press and SparkPress, among other brands including BookSparks which has promoted over 500 female authors. The studio focuses on promoting and publishing mostly women authors, experts and influencers, working with major publishers, collaborating with brands, celebrities and women’s media, and operating a community of women readers (SheReads.com) and a community of women writers (SheWrites.com). She quickly built a reputation as an innovative entrepreneur, disruptor and “the go-to publicist” for female authors, experts, influencers, creating innovative, results-driven, and female-focused campaigns that merged traditional and digital strategies. She took on one female author client, applied her high-tech and start-up PR experience and passion for women’s stories to the campaign, and through rapid word of mouth, now works with hundreds of the most well-known and up-and-coming female storytellers.

Brooke Warner is the publisher of She Writes Press, SheBooks, and SparkPress. She’s also president of Warner Coaching Inc., where she specializes in helping writers get published. In her 17 years in the publishing industry, including eight years as Executive Editor at Seal Press, Brooke has shepherded hundreds of books through the publication process. In addition to her role as Publisher, Brooke is a TEDx speaker (“Green-Light Revolution”) and author of Green-Light Your Book: How Writers Can Succeed in the New Era of Publishing (She Writes Press, 2016), What’s Your Book? A Step-by-Step Guide to Get You from Inspiration to Published Author (She Writes Press, 2012), and three books on memoir. She is the Chairperson of the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) and writes a monthly column for Publishers Weekly. She lives and works in Berkeley, California.

Lauren Wise’s passion for reading and writing brought her to the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, where she started her career in writing, editing, and publishing in 2005. Since then, Lauren has worked as a book editor, publishing consultant, and magazine columnist/editor. In 2009 she founded Midnight Publishing, an editorial company focused on helping authors publish positive, influential and inspirational novels, memoirs, and non-fiction content. For almost 15 years, she has established a readership as a music and travel journalist, writing for publications such as Noisey/VICE, Phoenix New Times, Phoenix Magazine, Runway,WHERE Phoenix+Scottsdale, WHERE Colorado, and more. Since 2015, Lauren has worked as the Editorial Manager for She Writes Press and SparkPress, and became Associate Publisher in 2019, helping to oversee a rapidly growing catalog of award-winning novels, memoirs, and non-fiction.

Shannon Green grew up in a small town in Arizona, where she escaped boredom by memorizing David Bowie lyrics and running a one-woman gazette called The Green News that she forced on her middle school classmates. She graduated from Arizona State University with a bachelor’s degree in English with a concentration in creative writing. In 2017, her published work “Mis Estrellas, Mi Alma” received the Jane Shaw Jacobs Award for Fiction.

Through creative writing workshops, she discovered a zeal for editing. She worked as a judge and editor for the global competition The Writer’s Games and was later hired as the Assistant Editor-in-Chief at Lux Undergraduate Creative Review, where she oversaw the editorial development of submissions in art, music, film, fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Her love of writing and editing landed her a coveted position in the 2018 Columbia Publishing Course. In Oxford, England, Shannon studied all aspects of the book publishing process under the direction of seasoned publishing professionals from Europe and North America. She graduated from the program with experience, new connections, and above all, the commitment to help authors bring their stories out into the world.

Shannon is thrilled to continue her book publishing career with the SparkPoint Studio team as an Editorial Project Manager for SparkPress and She Writes Press.

Sometimes, you can judge a book by its cover! Julie Metz is our art director with more than 25 years of experience, working primarily in the publishing field, and is thrilled to be part of SparkPoint Studio and our publishing imprints. She has created covers for a wide range of books including fiction/nonfiction, cookbooks and more, including her own New York Times bestselling memoir, Perfection.