Meet the SYP North Mentors 2023
Posted on June 11, 2023 in North
Are you looking to secure your first permanent role in the publishing industry? Or, perhaps you’re looking to take the next big step in your career? If the answer to either of these questions is a resounding yes, then the Society of Young Publishers Mentorship Scheme might be the perfect thing for you! Throughout the six-month mentoring period, mentees will receive a minimum of four formal one-on-one progress meetings with their mentor and will be invited to a virtual social event, to meet the other mentors and mentees of the UK-wide programme.
Since applications have now been extended for another week, it seems there is no better time to learn more about our mentors for this year. From lecturers to freelancers and senior editors, here are the publishing heavyweights at your disposal.
Alexa Gregson-Kenmuir (She/Her)
Alexa Gregson-Kenmuir has been teaching Publishing at UCLan since 2016. She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Association for Teaching and Learning and is a key member of the senior strategic team for growing the independent publishing business, UCLan Publishing. Prior to UCLan, Alexa worked in Sales & Marketing within academic publishing and she is also experienced in employability and recruitment.
Alice Corrigan (She/Her)
Alice Corrigan is the Area Sales Manager (North of England and Scotland) for Nosy Crow. After a few years in London, the north called her back and she has the joy of selling beautiful children’s books. This year she was also an Associate Lecturer on the MA Publishing course at UCLan. Alice can’t wait to work with SYP and all budding publishers!
Chloe Johnson (She/Her)
Chloe Johnson is the Senior Commisioning Editor for Modern Languages and Postcolonial Studies at Liverpool University Press. She previously worked in the journals team at LUP before moving into books editorial in 2016.
Christabel Scaife (She/Her)
Christabel Scaife has been working in academic publishing for over fifteen years and is currently a Senior Commissioning Editor at Liverpool University Press, where she commissions books in literary studies and Irish studies.
Debbie Williams (She/Her)
Debbie Williams is the Programme Leader for MA Publishing and a Senior Lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University. She teaches all aspects of Publishing and is a specialist in Writing and Illustrating Picturebooks. She has over twenty years’ of experience in the publishing and bookselling industry. After starting on the shopfloor at Waterstones, she went on to become Children’s Buyer at Waterstones Head Office, with responsibility for books such as Harry Potter, Twilight, Hunger Games and many more.
She moved into education fifteen years ago and founded the first publishing course in the North, and UCLan Publishing – the only student-led publishing house in the world. She was Chair of the Association for Publishing Education and won the Times Higher Award for Innovation in the Arts and the Newcomer Award Independent Publisher of the Year in 2019.
Emily Fish (She/Her)
Emily Fish has been an agent’s assistant at Aitken Alexander since September 2021, working with Chris Wellbelove on his list which spans literary fiction, big-idea nonfiction, and poetry. Prompted by her lack of support while applying to and attending Cambridge University, she has often collaborated with access and participation groups and feels passionately about improving access in academia and the arts. A staunch Mancunian, she is acclimating to London by frequenting its cinemas, coffee shops, and dance studios.
Emma Layfield (She/Her)
Emma Layfield is Picture Book Development Director for Hachette Children’s Group and Hachette UK’s Manchester Office Lead. She is also co-founder of Children’s Books North, a network for published children’s authors, illustrators and publishing professionals in the North.
Georgia Fuller (She/Her)
After graduating from Leeds University with a BA in History and Spanish, Georgia Fuller started her publishing career as an assistant in the Rights Department at Bloomsbury. Working on big brand names and wide-ranging markets, Georgia brought her skills and experience to the Darley Anderson Agency, joining in January 2019.
As Rights Manager, Georgia handles translation rights for all of the Agency’s Adult Fiction authors across multiple territories, including Spain, Brazil, Poland and Korea. An avid reader with a strong eye for commercial fiction, Georgia is dedicated to bringing our authors work to readers across the world.
Jessie Goetzinger-Hall (She/Her)
Jessie Goetzinger-Hall has been an Editorial Assistant at Headline, a division of Hachette UK, on the commercial fiction list since October 2021. During her time at Headline, she’s worked on books from the likes of Maggie O’Farrell, Dorothy Koomson, Neil Gaiman, and Alison Weir, and is currently looking to commission in the upmarket reading group and thriller space. Originally from a town near Sheffield, she now lives and works in London.
Jonathan Patterson (He/Him)
Jonathan Patterson is originally from a working-class background in the North East, and he attended Salford University to study Sociology and English Literature before accidentally falling into Finance and Accounting, working in the Manchester culture scene for nearly ten years before moving to London to take his first job in publishing at Random House in 2010. From there he moved to Hachette UK.
Jonathan has worked for five different divisions within Hachette in various Finance and Commercial roles, and is currently Commercial Director at Octopus – the biggest illustrated non-fiction division of Hachette. His current role includes working on our strategy with the senior team of the business, but he also gets involved in lots of operational activities that keep the business running smoothly – royalties, budgets, stock management, all of that kind of thing, which he finds endlessly interesting and demanding. He is also responsible for the Managing Editorial team, who work with commissioning editors and other creative teams across the division to put the books together and ensure they are ready to be printed on time and looking as beautiful and beguiling as they can.
Jonathan has always been interested in how we can make the UK publishing industry less London-centric and much less white and middle class – through the books that are published and the people involved in end to end creation and selling of those books, and in 2018 he co-founded the first socio-economic background focused employee group at Hachette UK – The All Together network.
The network advocates for increased diversity in the publishing industry, with a particular focus on increasing the numbers (and visibility) of authors and staff in the UK publishing industry. He was a key part of the team pushing Hachette to open nation-wide offices outside of London and in 2022 he used the opportunity offered to staff to move back to being based in Manchester.
Jonathan loves working in publishing and he loves books, but he’d be lying if he said this was his dream job, because growing up he just didn’t know that there was a publishing industry that had so many different career paths within it – he really wants to fix that for future generations so that anyone from any background sees this brilliant industry as an accessible route for their own career.
Josh Moreby (he/him)
Josh Moreby is originally from Cumbria and studied an MA in Publishing at the University of Central Lancashire. He worked in Production at Manchester University Press, interned in the Marketing and Publicity department at Bloomsbury Publishing before moving into sales and becoming a Key Account Manager in the DK Sales team.
Kerri Logan (She/Her)
Kerri Logan has been working at Hachette since 2019. In her current role as International Sales and Product Manager she looks after sales of John Murray Press and Hodder & Stoughton titles in Australia and New Zealand. She is based in the Hachette UK Manchester office.
Matthew Frost (He/Him)
Matthew Frost has been a commissioning editor at Manchester University Press since the 1990s. He has also worked at Carcanet Press, Manchester Metropolitan University and Waterstone’s Booksellers. He was the Secretary to the Trustees of the Manchester Literature Festival, and currently fulfils the same role at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation.
Rachel Quin (She/Her)
Rachel Quin is a freelance publishing professional with over eight years of experience and a passion for commercial fiction and non-fiction, digital marketing and most importantly, cats. Previously in-house at HarperCollins UK developing award-winning fiction marketing campaigns, she now works across genres with clients including Bloomsbury, Canongate, Faber, HarperCollins, Hachette, and Penguin Random House.
Rosie Hilton (She/Her)
Rosie Hilton is Publishing Manager at the Manchester-based publisher Saraband. Originally from Yorkshire, she now lives and works remotely from London.
Ruth Jones (she/her)
Ruth Jones is an editor on the Sphere fiction team, with her remit mostly covering women’s fiction but with a splash of saga and crime as well. She completed an MA in Publishing at UCLAN before joining Sphere as an Editorial Assistant at the tail-end of 2019, where she’s worked since until earning the title of Editor at the end of last year. Ruth has worked across a variety of different genres including narrative non-fiction, crime and thriller and women’s fiction.
Tierney Witty (He/Him)
Football, a Guinness and travel talk are what make Tierney Witty happiest. Assistant Editor for non-fiction at Seven Dials Books and Trapeze Books, he’s based in Hachette’s Manchester office and has begun building his list of authors at Orion.
Make sure to submit your application by 11:59 on 18th June.
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