18th July 2025 Rising Stars Feature
Bloomsbury Archer is the latest string to the bow of Rising Star alumna Leech Mateos
The Rising Stars 2022 honouree discusses her dream job of building a new science fiction and fantasy list from scratch, and coming full-circle at Bloomsbury, with Katie Fraser
R
ising Star of 2022 Vicky Leech Mateos has achieved new heights since she received The Bookseller accolade three years ago as commissioning
editor at HarperVoyager. Following her recogni- tion as one of the industry’s up-and-comers, Leech Mateos rose through the ranks to editorial director at HarperVoyager before leaving in 2023 to helm Bloomsbury Archer, the publisher’s new science fiction and fantasy (SFF) imprint, as publishing director. Chatting to Leech Mateos in the authors’
green room at Bloomsbury’s offices, the publisher’s “magical heritage”, as she dubs it, is all around us. Sarah J Maas’ romantasy oeuvre bedecks the walls, alongside epic fantasist Samantha Shannon, while their fantastical companions Alan Moore, Susanna Clarke and JK Rowling are on display elsewhere. Maas’ 161% sales increase, alongside a sales uplift for Shannon and children’s writer extraordinaire Katherine Rundell, helped Bloomsbury post a record-breaking profit in 2023–24. Having banked another stable year of profit and bagged Publisher of the Year at The British Book Awards earlier this year, Bloomsbury is expanding its SFF offering when Bloomsbury Archer officially launches this September. Leaving HarperVoyager while it was “at the
height of its powers” – shortly after it won The British Book Award for Imprint of the Year – to “start something from scratch” was a
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challenge for Leech Mateos. But returning to Bloomsbury represents a full-career orbit. “It feels very special to be back” at the publisher where she worked as an assistant editor in the children’s department from 2014-17 before beginning a six-year stint at HarperCollins. In her 2022 Rising Star interview, Leech Mateos said she left Bloomsbury for her “dream job” and explains that she returned in 2023 because “I felt like my dream job was created for me again”. She continues: “It feels like only I could do the job I’m setting out to do… I really felt like my quest was ready to continue once I gained all my armour and my swords and got to go to the next stage.”
L
eech Mateos leads Bloomsbury Archer with her belief and commit- ment to “quality storytelling and fan culture. [I want to make] sure that I’m offering something of real
worth, whether that feels like homage or some- thing new, it’s something that feels really valu- able to the community that I care about”. She adds: “That feels like the most important thing to me.” Leech Mateos has been acquiring dili- gently, winning multi-publisher auctions with hefty advances. Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson, previ- ously published by Gollancz, has moved to Bloomsbury Archer in a six-figure deal following a nine-way auction. Leech Mateos also won Brittany Arena’s debut and paid six-figures for Sarah Mughal Rana’s first novel, signed as part of a three-book deal. The imprint’s lack of backlist is both a boon
and a challenge. Having no precedence means “we will try new things, we will be experimen- tal”, but backlist is also “such an important part of most SFF publishing. It underpins and allows frontlist to function”. One of the chal- lenges Bloomsbury Archer faces is to make “our frontlist work as hard as possible”. Leech Mateos intends to “build something
that lasts” and hopes Bloomsbury Archer will become a “byword for quality and delighting readers, be that for genre newcomers or existing
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