Summer Centered: Lyali Pereda Figueroa '26 Explores the Publishing Industry in Puerto Rico

Like so many others, Lyali Pereda Figueroa ’26 had an extensive summer reading list. In June alone, the comparative literature major and education minor consumed more than 20 books ranging from several pages to more than 400, all in an effort to highlight the contributions of Puerto Rican authors and academics to the broader sphere of knowledge. 

Pereda Figueroa’s work was the focus of her self-designed internship supported by the John B. Hurford '60 Center for the Arts and Humanities. She spent the summer back home in Puerto Rico working with Editora Educación Emergente, a publishing company, Pereda Figueroa says, dedicated to releasing non-traditional works that other publishing houses might overlook. 

“There was a little bit of everything,” she says of her summer reads. “There were children’s books, short essays, and some big books of collected essays by different authors on the same topics. There were also records of conferences.”

Throughout June, Pereda Figueroa was tasked with gathering quotes from the books she read and tying them to a social media campaign that highlights Editora Educación Emergente’s 15 years of operation. In July, she assisted one of the company’s authors in digitizing their archives in advance of a new book. In all, she says, the experience has helped her better understand the publishing industry and rethink her future. 

Figueroa originally entered Haverford as a prospective history major but quickly found her way to comparative literature. After taking a creative writing course in Spanish, she says, she realized how much she enjoyed reading and editing her peers’ work but wasn’t quite sure what her future career would look like. Now, informed by her summer experience, she’s considering a future in educational publishing, especially designing educational materials for elementary and high school students.  

“It has helped me more closely define what I want my career to look like,” she says of her internship. “It has opened my mind to the amount of academic texts there are about Puerto Rican culture, history, and politics. It encourages me to focus on this area of study, even if I scarcely have the opportunity to explore it during my College courses.”

This isn’t the first time Pereda Figueroa has spent the summer examining Puerto Rico’s cultural history. Last year, she worked with the San Juan-based Hasta ’Bajo Project to capture the history of reggaetón, a genre that found its roots in Puerto Rico in the 1990s and quickly spread internationally. She later curated a VCAM exhibition called “Deconstructing Bad Bunny” that featured laser-cut images of some of the genre’s most iconic artists. An expanded version of the exhibition was also featured at Philadelphia’s Taller Puertorriqueño this spring and summer.