Shavit to leave Jonathan Cape to launch new Vintage imprint

Michal Shavit is to lead a new imprint at Penguin Random House (PRH) and leave her role as publishing director of Jonathan Cape.

The new as-yet-unnamed imprint at Vintage will launch next year with Shavit as publishing director, and will focus on publishing creative artists, global thought leaders, scientists, historians, activists, journalists, philosophers and cultural innovators.

It will seek to publish books of global and multicultural interest and work collaboratively with writers to develop projects and ideas at the frontier of thinking and creativity in their respective fields.

Shavit will finish at Jonathan Cape on Thursday 12th January. Vintage will then conduct an open recruitment process to appoint a new publishing director to lead the imprint.

Shavit, who joined PRH in 2012 and has published the likes of Ian McEwan, Ottessa Moshfegh, Julian Barnes, Claire-Louise Bennett, Emmanuel Carrère, Yuval Noah Harari, Jarvis Cocker, Afua Hirsch, Megan Nolan, Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, Ross Raisin, Katie Kitamura, and many others, said: “Working at Jonathan Cape has been the greatest privilege and joy an editor could wish for. I am deeply grateful to the authors who make this prestigious imprint what it is today.

“I will miss the amazing team at Cape who appreciate the fundamental importance of editorial excellence and quality. It’s been an incredible year with numerous bestsellers in fiction, non-fiction and poetry, as well as prizes.

“I am excited about this next chapter: having the chance to build a focused list from scratch and to have the space for more proactive commissioning, creative collaboration and connecting with international colleagues to bring global audiences to great writing and thinking is both inspiring and thrilling.

“Finding those writers who can provide intellectual light and sustenance as we try to navigate an uncertain and often unpredictable world, is what so many readers, including myself, search for as we try to make sense of who we are, our past, the present and future. I look forward to sharing more on the new imprint in due course.”

In recent years Shavit has also acquired some “significant international non-fiction projects” which are yet to be published, including Andrew Pontzen’s The Universe in a Box, Jerome Roos’ Crisis, Jonathan Loh’s Life Story, Elizabeth Prochaska’s Birth Story, Imaobong Umoren’s Empire Without End, and Neneh Cherry’s A Thousand Threads. 

Hannah Telfer, managing director at Vintage, said: “Michal exemplifies the highest standards of publishing excellence: her deep conviction that quality writing married with continual creativity will deliver commercial success has been proven repeatedly under her leadership of Jonathan Cape with an enviable track record of award-winners and bestsellers. It will be fascinating to see where Michal’s publishing takes us next.”