SUZY MEDEIROS JOLLY LEARNING
S
uzy Medeiros spent her early career in production, first at printer St Ives then at several
MALISSA MISTRY WILLIAM COLLINS/FOURTH ESTATE M
alissa Mistry has been in her current role for two years, selling in prize-winning and bestselling authors, from Hilary Mantel to David Attenborough, Craig Brown’s One, Two, Three, Four and Anna Jones’ One. As the division’s lead on Amazon and supermarkets, she
secured “repeated successes in a year when nothing was certain”, and is also HarperCollins’ group sales champion for Sainsbury’s, advocating for books across divisions. Mistry is “unfailingly the most prepared and positive person in any given meeting, with numbers at her fingertips and inventive, reactive instincts for strategy”, according to her colleagues. Her passion goes beyond her own role—she spearheaded an internal scheme in response to the Rethinking Diversity report, developed Harper:Lite virtual open days for would-be publishing professionals and set up cross-company task forces on how to diversify the freelance pool. Mistry is also a committee member for the HC BAME network Elevate.
CHARLIE MORRIS MACMILLAN CHILDREN’S
G
iven that her mother is a librarian, it’s unsurprising that Charlie Morris was an avid reader growing up,
working at her local indie bookshop as a teen before beginning her publish- ing career as children’s publicity assistant at OUP. She moved to adult titles at Orion, then spent five years as Little Tiger Group’s publicity and marketing manager. While there, she was shortlisted for a PPC award for her work on the BAME YA anthology A Change Is Gonna Come, and she spearheaded the campaign for LGBTQ+ YA anthology Proud. During lockdown, Morris became marketing manager at Macmillan Children’s Books, where she is working on the Marcus Rashford Book Club. A found- ing member of Pride in Publishing, an SYP London mentor and an ambassa- dor for Inclusive Minds, she recently joined the “Down The Rabbit Hole” podcast and launched a website championing LGBTQ+-inclusive chil- dren’s books, You Read It Queer First. This ties into her long-term mission: through “positive and well-developed representation in books, we can help change the world for the better”.
TheBookseller.com HOLLY OVENDEN FREELANCE S
triking out as a freelance is a well-trodden route for in-house design- ers looking to spread their wings; few will have been as unfortunate with timing as Holly Ovenden, who did so in March 2020, on the cusp of lockdown. She has “fortunately been keeping busy with projects
from a range of publishers”, but those familiar with her work will argue luck has little to do with it. A skilled illustrator whose designs span genres with ease, she has worked on striking liveries for Avni Doshi’s Booker-shortlisted Burnt Sugar (Hamish Hamilton) and Rosanna Amaka’s The Book of Echoes (Transworld), and was shortlisted for the Designer of the Year Nibbie. Her route to cover design “started out on an unusual footing”, as Ovenden completed a science degree and worked in the field for a couple of years, before taking a graphic design course and landing a junior designer role at Bloomsbury. What’s next? She’s “sworn to secrecy” on a “fantastic series project” due this autumn, and her cover for Annie Macmanus’ Mother Mother (Wildfire) will be oft-seen this summer.
publishing services companies. But she has had a step change at Jolly Learning, which she moved to in 2013, staring again in production but moving up to publishing director in the past three years. She says: “After many years managing production, I feel I have found my home in chil- dren’s education publishing, heading the editorial team.” She has driven the publisher’s new title and product development, but perhaps her biggest task at the moment is overseeing a top-to-bottom rebrand at Jolly, a refresh of the list that has essentially remained unchanged for 30 years. Another huge project is the digital platform launching in 2022, and a range of comprehension and creative writing resources. Of all that she has achieved at Jolly, she says she is particularly proud of her work on Jolly Futures, a pro-bono project to help boost literacy in some of the world’s poorest areas—it has had a particularly strong uptake in Sub-Saharan Africa.
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