18th July 2025 Rising Stars 34 Becca Souster Pan Macmillan 34 35
Devon native Becca Souster’s first job in the industry was at printers Clays, where she went for work experience and ended up creating an entire new department specifically for independent publishers and authors to give them the opportunity to print and distribute their books. This, in some ways, encapsulates a career of entering roles and exceeding expectations. The latest example is at Pan Macmillan, where she was brought in from audio specialist Zebralution in April 2024 to revamp the publisher’s audio strategy. In a rapidly changing landscape, Souster has excelled, powering Pan Mac’s audio toward huge growth in the year since joining. She will continue to evangelise about audio: “One thing I’d really love to see is a shift in how we talk about audiobooks. There’s still a bit of lingering snobbery around the idea that listening isn’t ‘proper’ reading – but it absolutely is. Audiobooks are a brilliant, valid way to engage with stories and they make reading more accessible to so many people.”
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James Tookey Peirene Press
35 Ed Thompson Waterstones
Aged just 26, Ed Thompson has been running Waterstones’ buzzy Hampstead outpost since last autumn and is currently training to become one of the retailer’s cluster leaders. It has been a meteoric rise: Thompson joined the chain in 2020, fresh out of university, at Foyles Charing Cross Road as a history bookseller. He moved to the Gower Street branch, later becoming an area commercial support – ordering books for an “area” that head-scratchingly included Gower Street, Tottenham Court Road, Amsterdam, Brussels and Jersey – before stepping up to his current role. He has loved every minute of “running up and down stairs, fetching books, working with some of the most interesting people I’ve met whose recommendations have sent me down countless joyful rabbit holes”. He thinks it is crucial for the industry to “ensure that books remain accessible for people across the country and don’t lose their place as one of the most affordable (and best) forms of entertainment out there”.
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Peirene Press has been revitalised since James Tookey and his co-publisher/fellow Rising Star Stella Sabin took over the indie literature-in- translation house’s reins in 2022. The list has expanded, both in title count and scope of commissioning, as has the international sales footprint, including a first distribution deal into the US from spring 2026. Tookey’s background may be ideally suited to Peirene: the Londoner studied comparative literature at the University of Kent then did Erasmus and an MA in Geneva. Previous trade experience includes administrating the Republic of Consciousness Prize, a prior stint at Peirene and working in online retailer warehouses, second-hand bookshops and independents including London Review Bookshop. Tookey wants “to see Peirene prosper… It’s a tough old game for an independent press but I hope that in five to 10 years Stella and I are running a successful mid-sized independent publisher with an exciting list, more staff and a bestseller or two in our pocket”.
37 Elizabeth Vaziri HarperVoyager and Magpie
Ohio native Elizabeth Vaziri moved to Britain 10 years ago for a master’s in medieval history at Oxford and considered staying on for a DPhil in a “period of history hewing very closely to Game of Thrones; no wonder I ended up in fantasy publishing”. Not only that, but she landed at George RR Martin’s UK imprint, as she joined the HarperVoyager and Magpie team after stops at OUP, Tor and a desk editing role at HarperCollins Children’s. She has acquired some of the imprint’s biggest books, including Kristen Ciccarelli’s TikTok sensation The Crimson Moth. There is much afoot for 2025 and into 2026, led by Rebecca Ross’ “ambitious” Wild Reverence this autumn, the launch of which will coincide with HarperVoyager’s 30th anniversary celebrations. Vaziri has no concrete plans for the long term but says: “I hope my days continue to be full of stories. I’m endlessly inspired by the people around me who write them, shape them and press them into the hands of readers.”
Features
Rising Stars
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