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Tomaszewska and Shang join Chatto & Windus as raft of changes announced
Virago editorial director Rose Tomaszewska and Kaiya Shang, editor of non-fiction at Scribner and Simon & Schuster, are moving to Chatto & Windus as part of a number of changes to the editorial team this autumn.
Tomaszewska, who began her career at riverrun and Quercus before joining Virago in 2019, will join Chatto as editorial director on 31st October following Poppy Hampson’s move to Atlantic Books.
She said: “I am deeply impressed by the vision at Chatto and what Clara Farmer and Becky Hardie want to achieve; it chimes with my own plans for the authors and books I hope to publish in the future.
“My time at Virago has been wonderful, and I’ll miss my authors and colleagues there dearly. This is an exciting new step, and I’m honoured to be joining the amazing team there at Vintage.”
Shang, The Bookseller’s 2022 Shooting Star, will also join Chatto as commissioning editor on 31st October.
She began her career at DK before moving to S&S in 2018 to be an editor on the non-fiction list. Her role expanded to include commissioning for the Scribner list in 2020, where she has built a list of fiction and non-fiction including Lydia Conklin’s story collection Rainbow Rainbow, climate activist Tori Tsui’s It’s Not Just You and forthcoming novel Hyper by Kurdish author Agri Ismaïl.
Shang said: “I’ve been reading Chatto books since I was a teenager. Now nothing brings me more joy than finding stories I have been searching for, or writers who do something original I’ve never seen before.
“Chatto is home to many of the authors whose work inspired me to fight to be a commissioning editor, particularly Xiaolu Guo, so to be joining the imprint in this role, and to be part of the wider Vintage family, is a dream come true – one that I’ve held for almost a decade.”
The new appointments coincide with a wider moment of expansion, as flexible ways of working offer long-term members at Chatto new opportunities, the publisher said.
From 1st October, publishing director Clara Farmer begins a part-time PhD in publishing history and will be working part-time in her current role. She will be studying the history of Chatto & Windus and the Hogarth Press 1946‒69 at the University of Reading, which houses the publishing archives for both presses.
In support of this shift, deputy publishing director Becky Hardie will broaden her role to take on more imprint responsibilities and line management within the Chatto team.
Additional support will be supplied by incoming assistant editor Rosanna Hildyard, previously editorial assistant at Headline. Asia Choudhry, Chatto’s editorial assistant, continues in her role.
Finally, Parisa Ebrahimi, Chatto’s long-time poetry editor, is stepping down to focus on her role as executive editor at Hogarth US. Chatto is currently recruiting a freelance poetry editor.
Hannah Telfer, m.d. of Vintage, said: “Chatto has enjoyed significant success in recent years under Clara and Becky’s senior leadership, and we are excited by this moment of change and refresh.
“It allows valued long-term Chatto team members to stretch their wings and grow, while giving us the opportunity to bring in new commissioning firepower, and build a talented team at all levels.”
