The University of Arizona Press
July 16, 2025
Summer is a great time to meet the people at The University of Arizona Press who turn book dreams into reality. We are a small but mighty team!
Today, we feature our Assistant to the Director & Rights Administrator, Ashley Amacher.
Hi Ashley! What do you do for the Press?
I wear two hats at The University of Arizona Press, acting as both the rights administrator and the assistant to our wonderful director, Kathryn Conrad. Essentially, I handle matters related to author contracts, copyright, permissions, and subsidiary rights licensing while also performing a host of administrative tasks to keep UAP organized.
How long have you been at UAP?
I have been at UAP for about eight months now, so I’m still relatively new to the world of scholarly publishing. It has been a lifelong dream of mine to work with books, so I feel very lucky to kickstart my publishing career at my alma mater. Bear down!
What do you like most about working here?
I love working in an environment that is so mission-driven. The pursuit and dissemination of knowledge is an undeniable priority for everyone who works here. Since I manage our translation and foreign rights licensing, I appreciate that I help share the valuable work of our authors with people all over the world. I love to connect new audiences with impactful books. You also can’t beat the satisfaction of digging through the records and uncovering the answer to a tricky permissions question!
What would people be surprised to learn about your work?
I think people would be surprised to learn how much research is involved in determining whether we can grant other people the rights to use or republish content from our books. My job involves constant investigation, and I feel like there is always something new to learn about copyright law and how it applies to different scenarios. People might also be surprised about the wide variety of different requesters I get to interact with, including scholars, musicians, creative writers, artists, and publishers of all sizes.
What do you like to do in your free time?
To no one’s surprise, I love to read! While I really enjoy working with academic monographs every day, my perfect evening at home involves sitting on the couch with my cat and falling headfirst into a fictional world. I currently cannot stop thinking about R.F. Kuang’s Babel, or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History. I am also on a mission to expand my music taste, so I try to listen to a new album every day. My all-time favorites range from Taylor Swift’s evermore to David Bowie’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.
