Storymix hires Thorpe and Matharu as team expands

Inclusive fiction studio Storymix has expanded its team with two new hires.

The company, which won the start-up award at this year’s FutureBook conference, has taken on full-time senior editor Ashley Thorpe, who most recently worked as a development editor at Sweet Cherry Publishing and is an author in his own right. He has held positions across educational and academic publishing.

Also hired via creative access and the Mo Siewcharran fund is marketing and editorial assistant Jayna Matharu who will lead on branding and content production across the Storymix social channels. Matharu is an illustrator with experience working as a children’s bookseller and social media designer and is passionate about inclusive literature and creating stories she would have loved as a child.

Storymix is a book packager that puts children of colour in the centre of stories “full of joy and adventure”. It was set up by Jasmine Richards in 2019, after she visited a bookshop and couldn’t find any young fiction series that centred a child that looked like her son. With 10 fiction series sold to publishers like Macmillan, Scholastic and Simon and Schuster, Storymix said it is “helping to change the publishing landscape by creating pathways to publication for underrepresented creators, and by originating and editing series that take up space on the bookshelf – and in children’s imagination”. 

Thorpe said: “The first time I met Jasmine it was clear that we were on the same wavelength, and I followed Storymix’s progress closely. When you’re driven by your values, you see results. The same is true when you believe in your team so it was an easy choice for me to join Storymix, and I thank Jasmine for having the faith in me to help lead this next exciting phase of development and finding talented writers to work with.”

Richards said: “I’m delighted our team is expanding. Ashley and Jayna are great additions who will help accelerate the change we want to see in the industry. I’m excited about how much more we can achieve with our growing team. We will reach and nurture more writers. We will create more series that represent and entertain and incubate new YA and MG projects that will provoke conversation and delight the imagination.”

The Storymix team now also includes Sara Grant, talent development consultant; Irem Ozpullukcu, editorial and operational assistant; Sinéad Gosai, PR and marketing consultant; Clare Whitston, editor and storyliner; and Stephanie King, development editor.