Scribe promotes Gwyn Jones to publisher-at-large

Scribe has appointed Philip Gwyn Jones as publisher-at-large at the same time as revealing its first three acquisitions for the year.

Gwyn Jones joined Scribe in 2014 as editor-at-large and was previously executive publisher for Granta Books, and for Portobello Books, which he founded in 2004. He left Granta in 2013 as part of a reorganisation.

Scribe will publish Whiskey Tango Foxtrot by Kim Barker as a paperback original in April to coincide with the nationwide release of the Paramount film starring Tina Fey, Martin Freeman and Margot Robbie. The book is a “wittily self-deprecating account of the life of a rather wayward female war correspondent adrift amongst the warlords, imams, drug-dealers, soldiers, spooks and partying journalists in Taliban-infested Afghanistan.”

Scribe has also signed Margaret The First by Danielle Dutton, a fictionalised account of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, who lived through the Civil War and Restoration in England. Rights were acquired from Cynthia Cannell Agency. It will be published in the UK this December as a “small and stylish” hardback. Catapult is publishing it in the US this spring.

The publisher has also acquired world English-lanugage rights to Mexican novelist Emiliano Monge’s Las Tierras Arrasadas. Rights were acquired from Maria Lynch and Sandra Pareja at the Casanovas Lynch Agency. The book is a “blackly comic account of a swashbuckling, amoral couple who run a small-time people trafficking business across the Mexico-USA border.”

Scribe is an Australian publishing house founded by Henry Rosenbloom in Melbourne in 1976. It established a UK branch in May 2013.

Rosenbloom said: “I’m thrilled with our rapid progress in the UK, the inspiring work of our staff and Faber’s sales team, and the warm reception of the UK media and book trade.”

Scribe has also promoted Molly Slight to publishing executive. She was previously publishing assistant.