Humphery and Parfitt join Sceptre's editorial team

Vintage’s Charlotte Humphery and Oxford University Press' Nico Parfitt are joining Sceptre’s editorial team in newly created roles. 

Carole Welch, publishing director of Sceptre, announced the appointment of Humphery as senior commissioning editor and Parfitt as assistant editor.  

Reporting to associate publisher Juliet Brooke, Humphery (pictured) will join in January to commission chiefly non-fiction for the list. Her remit is to help expand the non-fiction list and explore new potential markets. Initially she will also be working with editor Francine Toon’s authors while Toon is on parental leave.  

Humphery is currently commissioning editor at Chatto & Windus, where she has published non-fiction books such as Anne Helen Petersen’s book about Millennial burnout Can't Even, Lucy Burns memoir about abortion, Larger than an Orange and Ryan Wilson’s ode to teaching, Let That Be a Lesson. Her first publication, Nafissa Thompson-Spires’ short story collection Heads of the Colored People, was longlisted for the National Book Award and shortlisted for the James Tait Black Prize and Gordon Burn Prize. 

She is part of Chatto’s poetry team and this year won the auction for The Hill We Climb and Call Us What We Carry by American poet, Amanda Gorman. She has also worked closely with authors such as Edmund de Waal, Kayo Chingonyi, Rose Tremain, Christie Watson, Toni Morrison and Mark Haddon. 

“It has been a pleasure and a privilege working with the Chatto team, my colleagues across Vintage and our brilliant authors,” she said. “I will miss those books and friends but I am excited to start the new year at Sceptre. I have long admired the elegance, curiosity and creativity of their publishing and I can’t wait to introduce new stories, voices and ideas to their exceptional list.”  

Welch added: “This is an exciting expansion of the Sceptre team and we are thrilled to have Charlotte joining us. Charlotte has had a fantastic year of exceptional publishing – winning the auction to publish poet Amanda Gorman against stiff competition and publishing Larger than an Orange to widespread acclaim. Her taste and interests will both complement and extend Sceptre’s publishing, and we look forward to all the new writers and readers she will bring to the list.  

“We are also very pleased to welcome Nico Parfitt as assistant editor, who joins us from OUP where he is currently project editor in the academic trade department at OUP, working on a wide range of titles including Oxford World’s Classics and across several social sciences and humanities lists.”