Picador's Kidd becomes agent

Andrew Kidd is to depart Pan Macmillan to join literary agency Aitken Alexander. Kidd joined Pan Mac in 2002 as Picador publisher, and added a brief as Pan Mac fiction publisher at the start of 2006. He was previously with Hamish Hamilton and succeeded Peter Straus, who also left to become a literary agent, joining RCW.

Kidd's authors at Picador have included Booker Prize winners John Banville and Alan Hollinghurst. He has overseen Picador's high-profile plan to release new work in simultaneous hardback and paperback formats from later this year. He said: “My years at Pan Macmillan have been the most exciting and enjoyable of my professional life. In the end, the prospect of a new challenge proved irresistible, but I will miss my Pan Macmillan friends, and the extraordinary authors with whom it’s been my great privilege to work, more than I can say.”

David North, m.d. of Pan Macmillan, added: “Andrew has been a wonderful colleague and it is very sad to see him leave. However I'm delighted that we will be able to continue to work with Andrew and to benefit from his judgement as we engage with him in his new role as a literary agent.”
He is likely to leave the publisher April to take up the new role at Clare Alexander and Gillon Aitken's prominent literary agency.