Profile Books appoints editorial directors

Profile Books has promoted Rebecca Gray to editorial director for Profile and Serpent’s Tail and appointed Ed Lake editorial director of Profile.

Gray commissioned Karen Joy Fowler’s Booker shortlisted novel We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves and has recently acquired Alan Bennett’s new diaries, Keeping On Keeping On which will be published jointly with Faber & Faber in October this year. Gray has been with Profile Books since 2007 when the company acquired Serpent’s Tail. She was previously publicity director of Serpent’s Tail and then commissioning editor for Profile and Serpent’s Tail.

The company has also hired Lake, who will be joining in February, in the role of editorial director for Profile Books. Before coming to Profile, Lake helped to found aeon.co, an online magazine about science and ideas.

Lake began his journalistic career with a five-year stint at the Daily Telegraph, where he worked on several different desks and contributed to the books pages. In 2008, he went to Abu Dhabi to join the staff of the newly established National as an arts correspondent. He reported from arts events around the world, including the Cannes Film Festival and the Venice Biennale, before joining the paper's Review section as a writer and then deputy editor, commissioning review essays and foreign reportage from a diverse pool of international contributors.

Andrew Franklin, managing director of Profile Books, said: "Rebecca Gray has proved her mettle with a series of brilliantly judged acquisitions. Not only that, she has also proved herself to be a great publisher – and in our world there can be no greater compliment than that.  Lots of people know how to buy books, fewer have such consistently smart taste, and fewer still then know how publish their books to best effect."

He added: "Ed Lake hasn’t been a book editor before but he has had a distinguished and accelerated career first as a journalist and then an editor, commissioning long form essays for Aeon. He has exactly the formidable intellect, breadth of interest and sense of humour that are necessary to be a great editorial director. I cannot wait for him to start and I am looking forward to being dazzled by his acquisitions."