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Peter Blackstock—the first publisher to pick up Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain—on transatlantic differences and stepping up to head Grove Press UK.
The word “luck” comes up several times during my conversation with Peter Blackstock, vice-president and deputy publisher at Grove Atlantic in the US and now also publisher for the company’s Grove Press UK imprint. The first instance is when he reflects on his move from England to New York in 2011 to be with his American partner (now his husband). An assistant scout with Ros Ramsay at the time, Blackstock started applying for jobs in the US and “got very lucky” when he was hired as assistant to Grove Atlantic president and publisher Morgan Entrekin. He reflects: “It’s funny how your life could have taken another path. It’s great—I love New York publishing and I’m really happy with where I ended up. I feel very fortunate.”
His apparent good fortune comes up again when I ask about the impressive number of high-profile authors on his list. Blackstock was the first person to acquire and publish Douglas Stuart’s Booker Prize-winning début Shuggie Bain, and his roster includes several other award-winning writers, Bernardine Evaristo and Sayaka Murat among them. An early career highlight saw his author Viet Thanh Nguyen’s début novel The Sympathizer take home the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Blackstock says: “It definitely opens doors… People, agents take you a bit more seriously, but also you take yourself a bit more seriously, or at least you have a bit more self-confidence. I think it’s important to feel like you’re doing something that’s being recognised, but there is a lot of luck that enters into it.”
We are speaking during Blackstock’s first trip to the UK since March 2020. In the intervening time, he has been promoted to the newly created role at Grove Press UK. The imprint was created in 2010 by Entrekin to publish titles across literary fiction, crime fiction and narrative non-fiction. Historically, it exclusively published titles where Grove Atlantic is the American publisher, but it has recently started acquiring UK rights for some other titles too. The first of these was Jennet Conant’s The Great Secret, published by W W Norton in the US in September and Grove Press UK in October. Grove Atlantic will also continue to selectively license books to UK publishers.
Blackstock was already involved with the imprint’s list as an editor, but he says it has been “fun to do more with it” under his new remit. Though he is still based in New York, he works closely with group associate publisher Clare Drysdale and the rest of the Atlantic Books team in London, including campaigns executive Sophie Walker and associate publisher Karen Duffy, who look after marketing and publicity for the imprint respectively. The London team continues to handle sales and distribution for the list of 12 to 15 titles a year. Blackstock says that the move to remote working has enabled him to step into the role in a way that never felt possible before. “I always thought, ‘That sounds exciting’, but it was hard to imagine how you could do it unless you can come [to the UK] every few months,” he explains. “Whereas now it’s so great—I join campaigns meetings and I talk to Clare every week on Zoom. It feels easier to be part of the Atlantic team.”
Blackstock believes that not being from America enables him to take a different approach to many of his peers when publishing titles by international authors in the US
That said, he does hope to visit in person more often going forward. “I’m really looking forward to that. There are some things you can do on the phone chatting, but… I’ve been in the States for 10 years, and it’s a different market, it’s a different set of timings. And so, I feel like I just need to learn from the people that know best, which is the team out here [in the UK].” Reflecting on some differences between the book trade in the UK and the US, Blackstock says: “What’s interesting is, coming here, you see things differently. I went to some bookstores over the weekend, and really understood that there’s such a huge paperback market in the UK. Whereas in the States, with new releases, we have a hardback market and we can’t do the reinvention in paperback in the same way the UK can.”
Blackstock believes that not being from America enables him to take a different approach to many of his peers when publishing titles by international authors in the US. He explains: “Being an immigrant to the United States myself, it gives me a different perspective. It’s not necessarily better, but it’s different from my colleagues.” He continues: “My mother’s from Malaysia originally, she’s Punjabi. I’ve got some wonderful books by Asian or Asian American writers and it’s hard to say whether that’s related or not, but I think you can’t separate it out from yourself. You’re interested in what you’re interested in, for whatever reason.”
Blackstock was the only bidder on both Shuggie Bain and The Sympathizer in the US. He comments: “I do think there’s something to be said about how Grove Atlantic’s biggest successes in the States are often the books where we’re the only bidder. I think we’re just seeing something different. I don’t know why that is and I don’t want it to be like that, but I think it’s amazing that it happens time and again.” When considering what he is looking for at Grove Press UK, he says there are no “hard and fast rules about what we can and can’t do. There isn’t a very prescribed idea of what is a Grove Press UK title and what it’s not. It’s broad, I think. And that’s true of our publishing in the States, so it feels natural to us.” He admits that most of the list is “pretty literary” as “we don’t do well with commercial books”.
Some titles signed to the imprint are those that Blackstock or his colleagues lost out on in the US. One example of this is Anthony Veasna So’s short story collection Afterparties, which went to Ecco in the US but was published by Grove Press UK last summer. Similarly, The Immortal King Rao by Vauhini Vara will be published by Norton in the US, but Blackstock is “really excited” for its June release in the UK. He describes the début novel, telling the story of a young man who starts life on a coconut grove in India and ends up becoming a famous c.e.o. of a Silicon Valley tech company, as “super ambitious and imaginative”.
Another focus has been signing more fiction to the list, which has tended to be non-fiction heavy. His main ambition for the future of the imprint is “getting the books out there and bringing them to an audience”
Another book he believes has “huge potential” is Silje Ulstein’s début literary thriller, Reptile Memoirs, which he compares to Oyinkan Braithwaite’s Atlantic-issued My Sister, the Serial Killer, because “it’s a really unusual book, but it has that strong thriller/crime element”. He is also looking forward to the publication of Stewart O’Nan’s Ocean State, which is “very suspenseful, but also a beautiful evocation of a small-town American coastal world”. On the non-fiction side, Blackstock has high hopes for last month’s release, The Steal by Mark Bowden and Matthew Teague, focusing on Donald Trump and his allies’ attempt to overturn the 2020 US presidential election.
The imprint is also releasing some reissues, including Meditations in an Emergency by Frank O’Hara, whom Blackstock feels is “having a real renaissance as a poet”. Grove Press UK will publish the first UK edition of the book as a hardback in March. According to Blackstock, Grove Atlantic has a 2,500-strong backlist, so he intends to “go hunting” for more titles to introduce UK editions of. Another focus has been signing more fiction to the list, which has tended to be non-fiction heavy. His main ambition for the future of the imprint is “getting the books out there and bringing them to an audience”. He adds: “We’ve been really lucky so far, and the team here are great. So, it’s good things to come, fingers crossed.”
Though his track record as an editor can clearly be attributed to more than just chance, he says: “One of the things I really like about publishing is that you never quite know. It’s a very even playing field, surprisingly. Sometimes books just take you by surprise and we’re all trying to take advantage of those opportunities when they come.”