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Cheerio promotes Barnes and Brown
Publishing imprint and production company Cheerio has promoted Darren Biabowe Barnes to editorial director and appointed Lauren Brown as project administrator.
The news comes as the company grows its list of "bold, disturbing and thrilling" writing, having achieved its first bestseller in 2023.
Barnes joined Cheerio in 2019 as editor. In his new role, he will lead on the commissioning of fiction and non-fiction titles and the management of all submissions, as well as working with the in-house team and external partners including PR agency Riot Communications and its publishing partners, Turnaround and Europa Editions.
Barnes recently worked on Art is Magic by Jeremy Deller and is leading on edits for all of Cheerio’s 2024 titles, including A Little Art Education by journalist Lynn Barber, Pariah Genius by writer and filmmaker Iain Sinclair and Mrs Jekyll by the Welsh writer Emma Glass. He is also commissioning titles for future publication, including the first full-length book of non-fiction from the poet and musician James Massiah.
Moreover, Brown joins the team at Cheerio after having worked as a senior reporter at The Bookseller. She is a published author, and her debut memoir is called Hands: An Anxious Mind Unpicked (HarperNorth). As project administrator, Brown will provide support across all of Cheerio’s work, including managing its social media and website, preparing editorial reports on submissions, assisting with event logistics and communicating with all departments.
Barnes said: "I’ve had the pleasure of working at Cheerio since inception, and stepping into the role of editorial director at the start of what has been a brilliant second year of publishing has been a source of huge pride for me. From our first Sunday Times bestseller, Art is Magic by Jeremy Deller, to the continuing growth of our amazing poetry list; from our foundational commitment through extensive PR, digital marketing and events for our authors to the striking design of each of the titles. I can’t think of a more exciting place in publishing to be."
Harriet Vyner, joint director at Cheerio, added: “We are thrilled to be strengthening our team at Cheerio with the much-deserved promotion of Darren Biabowe Barnes to editorial director, and the hiring of Lauren Brown as project administrator. We look ahead to another exciting year of publishing in 2024, working with Turnaround on our sales and Europa Editions on print and production from January 2024.”
The end of 2023 will mark another change for Cheerio as it transfers its sales and distribution services from Profile Books to Turnaround, which will distribute the publisher’s titles in the UK and across Europe, the Middle East and Africa from 1st January 2024 with Europa Editions providing print and production services.
