Scribe UK has announced two promotions to take effect when Publisher-at-Large Philip Gwyn Jones departs next month.
Sarah Braybrooke will become Publisher and Managing Director, whilst Molly Slight will become Editorial Director.
Scribe’s founder and owner Henry Rosebloom says ‘I’m delighted that Sarah and Molly have agreed to take over Philip’s work on acquisitions. I’m confident that they will do excellent work in continuing to build the UK list and expand our market presence in the coming years. Sarah and Molly have been pivotal in setting up Scribe in the UK and I am confident in their abilities to steer it through this challenging moment to emerge with a list that is more compelling and impactful than ever.’
Braybrooke says ‘Notwithstanding the difficulties all publishers currently face, I’m so proud of what Scribe has achieved in just seven years in the UK, and really honoured to be working with Molly to continue the work Philip has done to establish our presence in the UK. 2019 was a groundbreaking year both for the quality of the Scribe list and for sales, with success in genres as disparate as investigative journalism — in the form of bestselling fraud exposé Billion Dollar Whale — and translated literary fiction — in the monumental form of The Eighth Life, a Booker International Prize-nominated 1000-page novel about Georgia. We’ll be continuing to publish many of the exciting writers that Philip signed and holding to the values of literary excellence and thoughtful publishing that he instilled in his time here.’
Slight says ‘It has been wonderful to see Scribe go from strength to strength and I am delighted to be taking it into the next phase of its life with Sarah. Philip set incredibly high standards, and I am looking forward to upholding these, both working with Scribe’s existing authors and bringing in new voices. I am particularly excited to announce several new acquisitions, including a second book by Georgian-German writer Nino Haratischvili, My Tender Twin, which will be translated by Charlotte Collins; a brilliant self-translated novella, The Union of Synchronised Swimmers, by Oxford-based Finnish-Romanian author Cristina Sandu; a multi-layered, genre-bending mystery set in Japan, The Perfect World of Miwako Sumida, by Bath Novel Award-winner Clarissa Goenawan; and a voice-led debut novel set on a condemned towerblock in Glasgow, The Voids, by Ryan O’Connor, who I believe is one of the sharpest new talents in UK fiction.’
Philip Gwyn Jones departs Scribe UK on May 22, after which Braybrooke and Slight will assume their new roles, with Braybrooke acquiring commercial nonfiction and narrative nonfiction, and Slight acquiring literary fiction and narrative nonfiction
