SOPHIE CLARKE DANIELA SCHLINGMANN LITERARY SCOUTING S


ophie Clarke unashamedly says she “never really grew out of reading children’s books”. An astute career move, it turns out, as in just over two years at Daniela Schlingmann she has become one of the most knowledgeable specialist kids’ scouts in the industry. The Bent


Agency’s Molly Ker Hawn, for example, enthuses: “Sophie never forgets a book I mention to her; and her international clients often tell me how secure they feel relying on her to keep them on top of projects and trends.” Clarke admits her job has been complicated by publishers’ cautiousness during the pandemic, but thinks the YA resurgence in the US may lead to a worldwide uplift (“vampires are coming back!”) and that young fiction, “especially the really heartwarming stuff, feels like a pure growth area”. Down the road, she just wants to get better: “In 10 years’ time I aim to be considered the scout for children’s in the US and UK, and a valued and reliable voice in the industry who knows my stuff inside out, and can help add to the success of a title in my own inimitable way”.


BEATRICE CROSS BLOOMSBURY B


eatrice Cross, hailed by author Katherine Rundell as “without a doubt the best publicist I ever worked with”, paid some dues breaking into publishing, with two years of work experience placements, a part- time gig at Pan Mac (which, along with a bookseller job at Watermark


Books, meant she was working 13-hour days) until she was able to get a full- time marketing and publicity role at Macmillan Children’s. She worked her way up the ladder, accompanying Julia Donaldson on a two-week tour of India in which her duties included, along with a publicist’s usual tasks, walking on her hands across stage as Annie the Acrobat from The Singing Mermaid as the author read from the book. She moved to Bloomsbury three years ago and was made head of the publicity team earlier this year. The Rundell-edited pandemic response The Book of Hopes was a “hugely heartwarming project to be part of and served as a reminder about what is most important: making sure that the books we publish reach readers and provide hope, comfort and pleasure”.


LEODORA DARLINGTON AMAZON PUBLISHING/OWNED VOICES


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eodora Darlington has blazed a trail through Bookouture and Canelo so far in her career, using her analytical and editorial skills to create a string of e-book bestsellers. While at Bookouture, Darlington discov- ered M M Chouinard and her police procedural title The Dancing Girls


through Twitter pitching event PitMad. After modest pre-orders, the title rock- eted up the charts when Darlington changed the cover and copy in line with US trends and researched extra promotional partners; to date, the title has shifted 250,000 copies. In 2019, she launched Owned Voices, an organisation that boosts writers from underrepresented backgrounds, beginning with writing workshops. “I remember a disappointing conversation about diversity and inclu- sion at work,” she said. “I suppose I was naïve in not realising it would be quite hard to get seemingly easy things done in the workplace. I thought ‘Well, I’ll just do it myself!’” This month she takes up a new editor role at Amazon Publishing.


SASHA DE BUYL CÚIRT INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF LITERATURE


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his year was Sasha de Buyl’s second at the helm of Galway’s Cúirt festival and her tenure has been a


bit of a baptism of fire. Not only has she had to programme two festivals in the midst of a pandemic, but also her début as a director, because of Cúirt’s early spring dates, meant that it was one of the first literary festivals to pivot to online. Yet it was a seamless transition, and it’s fair to say that the Cúirt virtual template has been copied by most other festi- vals. This year’s edition featured some changes to the model, including a successful “pay what you can” ticketing scheme, and de Buyl redoubled her efforts to focus on stories from people of colour, work- ing-class, Traveller and LGBTQ+ writers, and disabled artists. De Buyl says: “Typical literary festival audiences are really loyal and we love that. But they can be the same sort of audience, and I think it is really important if you are programming to make sure you get people in that aren’t often invited to the table.”


TheBookseller.com 09


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