Rowan Yapp joins Bloomsbury after a decade at Vintage

Rowan Yapp will join Bloomsbury as publishing director to run the cookery and illustrated non-fiction lists after more than a decade at Vintage.

Yapp joins from Penguin Random House (PRH) where she has managed the Square Peg imprint, publishing bestsellers such as Rukmini Iyer’s Roasting Tin cookbook series. She has worked with authors such as Georgina Hayden, Stephen Moss, Claire Ptak and Chatto & Windus’ Nigella Lawson since joining PRH in 2008 from John Murray. She was a Bookseller Rising Star last year, credited as one who "saw potential in tapping into the flexitarian food sector" from the handwritten proposal for The Roasting Tin series.

Yapp will start on 6th April 2020, reporting to ex-Picador chief Paul Baggaley, who is joining as editor-in-chief for its adult consumer publishing later this year.

Emma Hopkin, m.d. of Bloomsbury consumer publishing, said: "We are so pleased to welcome Rowan to Bloomsbury to manage our cookery and illustrated non-fiction lists, as we have great ambition for this area of our publishing. We have a superb line-up of chefs who will benefit from Rowan’s strategic thinking and publishing experience, and we can’t wait to introduce her to our authors and our excellent team."

Yapp said: "To have worked at Vintage for the past 10 years has been an incredible experience. The books, the authors and, above all, my colleagues have been an inspiration and I have learned a huge amount from them. I am thrilled to take on this exciting role with Bloomsbury, working with a wonderful list of authors and realising new strategic ambitions."

Bloomsbury Absolute continues to be run separately by Absolute Press founder Jon Croft from its Bath office. Croft reports to Hopkin.