Andreou swaps Knopf for Harvard University Press

George Andreou has been appointed as director of the Harvard University Press after 27 years at Knopf.

He will leave current his role as vice president and senior editor at Knopf to begin at Harvard in September, succeeding William P Sisler, who has served as director from 1990 until his recent retirement.

Provost Alan Garber said he was “delighted” the appointment and that it was a “clear choice”.

He said: “The press is a leader in the world of academic publishing, and Andreou’s outstanding record in trade publishing, broad understanding of the industry, and previous work with many distinguished authors made him a clear choice to steer this treasured institution into the future.”

Andreou has published a broad range of fiction and nonfiction, including works by Nobel laureates V S Naipaul, Orhan Pamuk and James D Watson as well as and Pulitzer Prize-winning poets John Ashbery and Peter Balakian.

He studied at Harvard and Yale before joining the New York publishing industry. He began at Knopf in 1990 as an editorial assistant and worked his way up to his current role in 2005.

In 1994, he co-founded Vintage Español, an imprint dedicated to publishing select works of fiction and nonfiction in Spanish for the Umarket. Among the first authors he published there were Junot Díaz, Rosario Ferré, and Cristina García. Vintage Español became one of the largest Spanish-language publishers in the country, with authors including Isabel Allende, Roberto Bolaño, and Gabriel García Márquez.

He said: “I feel greatly honored to have been charged with leading Harvard University Press into its second century. The storied tradition of the press is testament to the singular creativity of its authors and staff, past and present.”

Andreou said that the current landscape offered “unique opportunities for academic publishing. He said: “These are transformational times, both in the academy and in publishing, and they present unique opportunities for prosecuting the dual mission first enunciated by my early predecessor Dumas Malone in the 1930s, to serve both the scholarly community and the serious general reader.”

Founded in 1913, Harvard University Press publishes works in natural sciences, humanities, social and behavioral sciences, business, and medicine.