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.” That said, he does hope to visit in person more oſten going forward. “I’m really looking forward to that. There are some things you can do on the phone chating, 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 beter, 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 oſten 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 “prety literary” as “we don’t do well with commercial books”.
On the horizon Six Grove Press UK titles due in 2022
Some titles signed to the imprint are those that
Sometimes books just take you by surprise and we’re all trying to take advantage of those opportunities when they come
Peter Blackstock
Blackstock or his colleagues lost out on in the US. One example of this is Anthony Veasna So’s short story collec- tion Aſterparties, 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 ambi- tious and imaginative”. 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 beauti- ful 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 Mathew Teague, focusing on Donald Trump and his allies’ atempt 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 ambi- tion for the future of the imprint is “geting 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
atributed 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.”
Meditations in an Emergency Frank O’Hara 3rd March, £12.99, 97816118565 Originally released in 1957, this is a seminal poetry collection with cult appeal, published in the UK for the first time.
TheBookseller.com
Reptile Memoirs Silje Ulstein 17th March, £14.99, 9781611856507 A twisty and unusual literary thriller that was a major bestseller in Norway. It asks the ques- tion: can you ever really shed your skin?
Home/Land Rebecca Mead 21st April, £14.99, 9781611856606 A reflection on the compli- cated nature of home, and the heartache and adventure of leaving an adopted country to return to your native land.
Ocean State Stewart O’Nan 5th May, £16.99, 9781611856552 A compelling novel about sisters, mothers and daughters, and the terrible things love makes us do.
Dalva
Jim Harrison 2nd June, £10.99, 9781611854305 A reissue of a classic of American literature and Harrison’s most ambitious novel—the story of one woman’s journey to find her son.
The Immortal King Rao Vauhini Vara 2nd June, £16.99, 9781611856491 Spanning a century, this début tells an epic story about power, modernity and family lineage, and introduces a bold new voice.
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