THIS WEEK
Company Spotlight Grove Press UK
Re-crossing the pond: Blackstock aims to revamp Grove Atlantic’s UK arm
Peter Blackstock—the first publisher to pick up Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain—on transatlantic differences and stepping up to head Grove Press UK
CarolineCarpenter @carolinec1988 T
he word “luck” comes up several times during my conversation with Peter Blackstock, vice-president and deput 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 aſter marketing and publicit 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
12 4th February 2022
Photography: Tyler Kinder
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