CANADA (2024)
To remove barriers of entry to the publishing industry, our award-winning design team at Penguin Random House Canada (PRHC) launched two initiatives aimed at up-and-coming artists and designers: the PRHC Design Award and the PRHC Portfolio Review for Emerging Creatives.
The PRHC Design Award provides the opportunity for one selected winner to receive mentorship from PRHC’s in-house design team, consisting of six hour-long sessions over a period of six months.
The PRHC Portfolio Review for Emerging Creatives invites selected participants to a session where emerging artists and designers can receive feedback on their portfolios from our award-winning design team.
MEXICO CITY (2024)
Penguin Random House held “Pride in Your Writings,” a forum for inclusive representation in literature, on March 23. Organized by our Mexico office’s LGBTQ+ subcommittee, the event featured Penguin Random House authors and several drag storytellers. Speakers addressed a variety of topics, including the following: the experiences of authors with diverse realities, ways to support LGBTQ+ people with disabilities, representation of the LGBTQ+ community in narratives, lesbian stories beyond stereotypes, and queer stories more broadly.
Penguin Random House is taking meaningful steps to advance reconciliation with Indigenous Australians through our Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP), a formal commitment to respect and connect with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, developed in partnership with Reconciliation Australia.
In 2024 we completed our Reflect RAP—the first of four stages—focused on internal education, external relationship-building, and the exploration of Penguin Random House’s potential for positive impact. In 2025 we began our Innovate RAP, working closely with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander representatives and Reconciliation Australia to develop an action plan that will advance our reconciliation commitments.
TORONTO, CANADA (2024)
Penguin Random House’s sponsorship of Word on the Street, a Toronto-based literary festival, helped provide necessary support to festival attendees in the form of barrier-free access, ASL interpreters, and live captioning of events. In conjunction with this sponsorship, we authored an interview with local booksellers on the importance of accessibility at book events and in publishing at large, in an effort to inspire continuing conversations around accessibility across the industry.
U.S. (2024)
In collaboration with We Need Diverse Books, Penguin Random House presented our Creative Writing Award winners with a week of professional development programming, offering practical knowledge and insight into the book world. Our six $10,000 scholarship recipients gained direct access to publishing professionals through a series of virtual events designed and hosted by the Penguin Random House Corporate Communications Team.
Since 1993, this program has awarded more than $2.9 million to public high school students for original poetry, memoir/personal essay, fiction/drama, and spoken word compositions. To learn more about the Creative Writing Awards, click here.
FRANKFURT (2024)
Penguin Random House Verlagsgruppe was the main sponsor of the first reception of the Queer Media Society at the 2024 Frankfurt Book Fair.
Rebecca Prager, Head of Corporate Communications at Penguin Random House Verlagsgruppe, spoke at the reception on behalf of Penguin Random House Verlagsgruppe and be.queer, the network for LGBTIQ employees and allies at Bertelsmann, emphasizing the importance of the network for togetherness and mutual support as well as for visibility and awareness in the workplace.
Penguin Random House participated in City Harvest’s Share Lunch Fight Hunger campaign for the 16th year, supporting efforts to address food insecurity in New York City. In addition to fundraising, we hosted a dedicated volunteer repack shift at City Harvest’s Cohen Community Food Rescue Center in Brooklyn, where employees helped prepare food for local distribution.
In a time of great need, with 1 in 4 children facing food insecurity, Penguin Random House is proud to partner with City Harvest to feed NYC kids and their families. Learn more about Share Lunch Fight Hunger here.
SARASOTA, FL (2023)
Penguin Random House donated over 150 LGBTQ+ books across eleven divisions for a student-led Pride event at the New College of Florida. The school has been in the news recently as a site where partisan politics and educational freedom are clashing in a way that’s not unrelated to the wave of book banning we’ve been seeing throughout the nation. As a result of the recent appointments by Gov. DeSantis to the New College Board of Trustees in support of his views, students have been restricted in the kinds of activities they can do with school funds—including DEI and LGBTQ events like Pride.
U.S. (2021)
In honor of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month in May 2021, we announced the launch of Uplift AAPI Stories. Expanding on last year’s #ReadAsianAuthors initiative, we’re inviting readers to uplift AAPI stories and #ReadAsianAuthors. This initiative aims to celebrate and uplift the stories of our AAPI authors, and we partnered with AAPI influencers across social media platforms to reach as many diverse readers as possible.
To continue our support of the AAPI community, we donated 15% of net proceeds from PRH.com sales in the month of May to Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC, an organization “fighting for civil rights and empowering Asian Americans to create a more just America for all.” We have previously worked with AAJC, as well as Stop AAPI Hate, with donations made to both organizations earlier this year. We also partnered with non-profit writing organization Kundiman by sponsoring an eight-week creative writing workshop, giving twelve AAPI writers the opportunity to attend free of charge. Internally, we hosted a bystander intervention training with Hollaback! for employees, in addition to a Q&A featuring the President & Executive Director of AAJC, John Yang.
CANADA (2022)
In Canada, we committed to a multi-year sponsorship of Simon Fraser University’s Greg Younging Scholarship for an Indigenous student in the Masters of Publishing program at SFU. The scholarship aims to help eliminate the barriers Indigenous people face to entering and flourishing in the Canadian publishing industry, work that is fundamental to our commitment to building racial equity.
