Headline announces 'serious' non-fiction imprint, Headline Press
Headline Publishing Group is launching Headline Press, a new "serious" non-fiction imprint led by publisher Martin Redfern.
Senior commissioning editor Bianca Bexton will join Redfern on the Headline Press team alongside assistant editor Holly Purdham and editorial assistant Ellie Harris. Their focus will be "thought-provoking books that challenge and inspire" with an emphasis on politics, current affairs, history, personal development, popular science and memoir.
Redfern said: "The launch of Headline Press is an exciting moment which provides clarity and identity to Headline’s serious non-fiction publishing. Headline’s guiding spirit is to publish books that people want to read, and combining these commercial instincts with the new imprint’s broad and deep editorial expertise in serious non-fiction will position our authors for success. We are proactively commissioning and acquiring, and have ambitious growth plans for the list."
Headline Press will publish its first titles this summer beginning with Power to the People, a "radical" manifesto for global activism by former Oxfam c.e.o Danny Sriskandarajah. This will be followed by Murder in the Gulag, a "riveting" account of the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, by former journalist John Sweeney and The Red Emperor, a "revelatory" biography of Xi Jinping by Michael Sheridan.
The history and current affairs list will be supplemented with titles from Sam Altman, housing journalist Gabriella Bennett, Dr Madeleine Pownall, Grace Ioppolo and Dr Laura Hamer.
Headline Press will enter the personal development, popular science and memoir space with Julia Rosen’s Grassroots, the "untold story of entangled relationship with grass", and The Social Lives of Birds by Joan E Strassman, a "fascinating" exploration of cooperation and conflict that shapes the bird world.
The Light of Day, the "remarkable" story of the first man to come out as homosexual in 1960 of his own accord and using his name, from Christopher Stephens and Louise Radnofsky also joins the list.
Mari Evans, managing director, commented: "Headline Non-fiction has been building a list with ever greater layers over several years now, but with the appointment of Martin Redfern and Bianca Bexton to the team at the end of 2022, the firepower in our serious non-fiction acquiring was immediately supercharged.
"They have each brought a dynamic new mindset to bear, which you can see in the quality and range of the projects they’ve acquired, which in turn led to their strategy for the creation of the new Headline Press imprint."
