Poet and academic Howe joins Chatto & Windus as freelance poetry editor

Poet Sarah Howe is joining Chatto & Windus as a freelance poetry editor, curating the imprint’s poetry list following its renaissance under editor Parisa Ebrahimi.

Publishing up to five titles a year, Howe will work with existing Chatto poets and will acquire new voices for the list. She will be supported by the in-house team, comprising publishing director Clara Farmer, assistant editor and Barbican Young Poet alumnus Rosanna Hildyard, and publicist Mia Quibell-Smith.

Howe is a poet and academic whose first book, Loop of Jade (Chatto & Windus) won the T S Eliot Prize and the Sunday Times/PFD Young Writer of the Year Award and was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Since then, she has worked as a curator, editor and teacher of poetry in various different capacities.

She is a trustee of the Griffin Foundation, serves on the board of Ledbury Poetry Festival and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She is also currently a poetry lecturer at King’s College London.

Farmer said: "Sarah Howe’s Loop of Jade was the first debut collection – and Sarah the first woman of colour – to win the T S Eliot prize. I remember the joy that night, and it was a moment that helped usher in the more inclusive poetry scene that we enjoy today. Chatto is immeasurably proud to be Sarah’s publisher, and we salute the vision of Parisa Ebrahimi who brought Sarah – and many other dynamic new poets – to the list."

Howe added: "I am honoured to take over the Chatto poetry editorship from Parisa Ebrahimi, whose vision gathered many of my generation’s most beloved poets into a list of such range and shining brilliance that it changed the face of our artform. I look forward to serving as a champion and sounding board for our poets, while keeping an ear tuned to the essential voices of the future.

"I’ll be looking across the rich breadth of today’s poetic practice for writers who speak undeniably to now, and who will continue to reverberate in poetry’s longer conversation: poets who surprise and enchant, who will challenge us and move us. I’m excited to work with the outstanding team at Chatto and can’t wait to guide this illustrious list through the next phase in its evolution."

Howe will start at Chatto on 1st November 2023 and can be contacted at SHowe1@penguinrandomhouse.co.uk from that date.