The Best Book Editors

Tash Barsby was a Commissioning Editor at Transworld Publishers and worked at Vintage Books, Macmillan, and Simon & Schuster before moving to Penguin Random House, where she worked with authors Sarah Pearse, Fiona Barton, Lesley Kara, and Tess Gerritsen.

Josie Humber was a Senior Commissioning Editor at Hodder & Stoughton (Hachette), home to authors including Jodi Picoult, Stephen King, David Nicholls, and Erin Kelly. Josie has worked with bestselling authors such as Kate Mosse, Kate Morton, and Joanna Trollope.

Elizabeth Kulhanek was an Associate Editor at Grand Central Publishing, a division of Hachette and home to bestselling and acclaimed authors such as Nicholas Sparks, James Patterson, Lisa Gardner. She has worked with bestselling authors, including David Baldacci, Scott Turow, Harlan Coben, Sandra Brown, Octavia E. Butler, and Min Jin Lee.

Emily Kitchin was an Editorial Director at HQ (HarperCollins), home to authors including Adele Parks, Linwood Barclay, Sarah Morgan, Carrie Hope Fletcher, and Erica James. She has worked with bestselling authors such as Holly Bourne, Jennifer L. Armentrout, Sarah Maine, Elin Hilderbrand, Emily Giffin, and Leia Stone.

Lizzy Goudsmit Kay was a Senior Commissioning Editor at Transworld Publishers, a division of Penguin Random House, home to authors including Kate Atkinson, Dan Brown, Bill Bryson, Lee Child, Richard Dawkins, Paula Hawkins. She has worked with bestselling authors including John Lewis Stempel, Ella Risbridger, Nick Robinson, and Sue Black.

Craig Leyenaar was a Commissioning Editor at Titan Books, home to authors including Stephen King, V.E. Schwab, James Lovegrove, Mickey Spillane, and Paul Tremblay. Craig also worked at Gollancz, part of the Hachette group, home to authors including Brandon Sanderson, Joanne Harris, Patrick Rothfuss, Alastair Reynolds, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Ben Aaronovitch.

Krystle Appiah was an Editor at Macmillan Children’s Books, home to authors including Marcus Rashford, Frank Cottrell-Boyce, Tomi Adeyemi, and Julia Donaldson. She has worked on children’s books from Sir Lenny Henry’s The Boy with Wings to Padraig Kenny’s The Shadows of Rookhaven.

Nic Caws was Senior Commissioning Editor at Headline, part of Hachette, and their boutique romance imprint Headline Eternal, home of bestselling authors such as Sarah Adams, Erin Sterling, and Mariana Zapata. She spent over nine years in editorial at renowned romance publisher Harlequin Mills & Boon.

Gillian Holmes was an acquiring editor and copy editor at Penguin Random House where she acquired authors such as Katie Flynn. She has worked with bestselling authors Kathy Reichs, Dorothy Koomson, Tony Parsons, Rosie Goodwin, Amanda Prowse, Alan Titchmarsh, Jackie Collins, and Amy Silver (aka Paula Hawkins).

Sadé Omeje was an Editor at HarperCollins 4th Estate, home to Hilary Mantel, Anthony Doerr, Jonathan Franzen, and Ann Patchett. Sadé worked with fiction and non-fiction from acclaimed authors such as Coco Mellors, Emmanuel Iduma, Joyce Carol Oates, Rodrigo García, Hannah Durkin, and Jonathan Escoffery.

Francine Toon was a Commissioning Editor at Sceptre, Hodder & Stoughton’s literary imprint. She has worked on the novels of Stephen King, John le Carré, Fredrik Backman, and Erin Kelly. She has published award-winning authors such as Ned Beauman, Jessica Andrews, Rowan Hisayo-Buchanan, Kopano Matlwa, and Huma Qureshi.

Sorcha Rose was an Editor at Hodder & Stoughton, a division of Hachette and home to authors including Stephen King, B.A. Paris, and Lucy Score. She has worked with the authors John Grisham, Peter Robinson, and Sophie Hannah, and on Erin Kelly’s Sunday Times bestseller The Skeleton Key and Will Dean’s The Last Thing to Burn.

Natasha Qureshi was Commissioning Editor at Hodderscape, Hodder & Stoughton’s SFF imprint, home of international bestsellers Frank Herbert, L.R. Lam, Isabel Ibañez, Roshani Chokshi, and Pierce Brown. She has worked with authors such as Cecy Robson, Ella Fields, Thomas Olde Heuvelt, and Micaiah Johnson (shortlisted for the 2024 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction).

Georgia Summers was an Editor at Tor, an imprint of Macmillan, home to authors including Cassandra Clare, Olivie Blake, Adrian Tchaikovsky, and T.J. Klune. She was the commissioning editor for the international cozy fantasy bestseller Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree.

Simran Kaur Sandhu was an Editor of middle-grade and Young Adult fiction at Macmillan Children’s Books, home to authors including Hilary McKay, Meg Cabot, Judy Blume, and Eva Ibbotson. With prior experience at HarperCollins, Profile Books, and Serpent’s Tail, she worked with award-winning authors including Tomi Adeyemi.