Meadows leaves Granta for Picador editorial director role

Anne Meadows is leaving Granta to join Picador as editorial director.

Meadows started her career with an internship at A P Watt, and a brief stint at the BBC. She was hired as Granta’s editorial assistant in 2010, where she worked with Eleanor Catton, Sarah Moss and Patrick deWitt. She has acquired a number of prize-winning British novelists, including Desmond Elliot longlistees Alex Hyde and Jonathan Lee, Forward Prize shortlistee Holly Pester, and Gwendoline Riley, whose First Love was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, Dylan Thomas and Goldsmiths prizes, and awarded the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. 

Currently Granta’s editorial director, Meadows has also published writers including Women’s Prize longlisted Sandra Newman, Man Booker International shortlisted Mariana Enríquez, and Sayaka Murata, whose Convenience Store Woman has sold more than two million copies worldwide, according to the publisher.

She also founded the Granta traineeship scheme in conjunction with Creative Access and the Aziz Foundation, and oversaw Granta Editions, a bespoke list of outsider classics.

Meadows, who joins in July 2022, said: “I have always admired Picador for its energy and clout, and I am thrilled to be joining their brilliant team. It’s a wonderful opportunity for me to broaden my publishing, and expand and build on the more commercial side of my list. I believe strongly in publishing the best new writers, in any genre, with conviction and commercial nous, and I am so happy to have found a new home with a team dedicated to doing just that. I am grateful to all my colleagues and my authors at Granta. It’s been an incredible education, and I am so excited for what comes next.”

Picador publisher Philip Gwyn Jones commented: “It is really exciting for us to have the prospect of Anne joining our publishing team at Picador. We are all so impressed by what she has achieved at Granta and by what she wants to do at Picador, and excited to see what she will make of the greater commercial room and reach available here at Pan Macmillan. She is joining an editorial team on tremendous recent form, and an imprint intent on publishing original, memorable, unmissable books ever more effectively, and we are confident Anne will herself soon bring in prize-winners and best-sellers of her own. And I am certain she will make an excellent colleague – she is principled and passionate, and publishes with style and commitment.”