SYP London Ahead Mentors 2023
SYP London is delighted to introduce the mentors for the 2023 SYP London Ahead stream, which is dedicated to helping those already working in the publishing industry and hoping to take the next step. The mentorship scheme is a fantastic opportunity to receive personalised, structured career guidance from publishing experts, learn more about the industry and work on the key skills needed to progress within it.
SYP London branch covers the following areas: Buckinghamshire, London, East Sussex, Essex, Greater London, Hertfordshire, Kent, Surrey, West Sussex.
Please note applications to the 2023 Mentorship Scheme are now closed. We will get in touch about successful applications at the beginning of July 2023.
Susan Armstrong joined C&W Agency in 2005, became an Agent in 2010 and a Director in 2019. She represents a broad range of novelists, including multi-million copy bestseller ML Stedman, New York Times bestseller Miranda Cowley Heller, Sunday Times bestsellers Joanna Cannon, Jo Browning Wroe and Daniel Cole, Costa Short Story Award winner Jess Kidd, Australian multi-award winner Maxine Beneba Clarke, Irish Times bestseller Anne Griffin, Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year nominee Kim Sherwood and critically-acclaimed crime writers Olivia Kiernan and Jo Callaghan.
Serena Arthur is fiction Editor at Trapeze Books, an imprint of Orion Books (a division of Hachette UK), that focuses on conversation-starting fiction and non-fiction. She is editing and publishing across the list and is drawn to books that are bold, distinctive and memorable. She joined Orion in June 2022 after a few years at Headline Books (another Hachette UK division), where she was first an editorial trainee for the Headline Fiction team and then editorial assistant within the Wildfire Books team. Outside of work, she is a writer and performer of spoken word poetry.
Phoebe Barker is a Marketing Manager at independent publisher The Indigo Press, specialising in campaign creation, social media and website development. She is qualified with the Chartered Institute of Marketing and has worked on campaigns including Kyle Theory by @VulgaDrawings creator Lily O’Farrell.
Amy Mae Baxter is Senior Editor at Dialogue Books (Hachette), and the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Bad Form, a multi-award-winning magazine by and about writers of colour. She was named a Big Issue Changemaker of 2022, and a Bookseller Rising Star in 2021. She has a degree in History from the University of Cambridge.
Sheila Crowley is a Literary Agent at Curtis Brown and represents a wide range of authors from award-winning novelists to million-copy-selling non-fiction writers. Authors are at the centre of everything she does as an agent – one of the best things about the job is working closely with writers across all stages of the publishing process. Born and bred in Dublin, Sheila started her publishing career at Poolbeg press before moving to London in 1991. Through the 90s and 00s she held a number of high-profile sales and marketing positions at leading publishers, including HarperCollins and Hodder. She made the move to agenting in 2003.
Becky Davies has worked in children’s publishing for over ten years and is currently Senior Commissioning Editor at Little Tiger Press. Becky’s career has been hugely varied: after her first job as a Sales, Marketing and Rights Assistant she moved into Editorial, where the breadth of her experience lies. Becky has worked for a small independent publisher as well one of the Big 5, has experience in a literary agency, and has edited and conceived all manner of books from baby board, licensed character products and non-fiction through to adult colouring books (remember that craze?). Becky has also taught Publishing to students enrolled on the Writing for Young People MA at Bath Spa University. For the last four years Becky has worked for Little Tiger on novelty board books, picture books, and the odd graphic novel. She is also the author of many books for children, including sixteen picture books. Creative problem solving is her passion!
Yolande Denny is the Production Director and a member of the leadership team at Little Tiger Press, a children’s book publisher, owned by Penguin Random House. The team produce a diverse range of high-quality books, helping children develop a life-long love of reading. With nearly 30 years in the publishing business, Yolande has global experience selecting, appointing, and managing manufacturing and supply chain businesses around the world. She run a busy production department delivering a broad range of books and book-plus product working with suppliers who meet the publisher’s exacting compliance and safety standards to create safe product for their young readers.
Rosanna Forte is a Senior Commissioning Editor for fiction at Sphere, an imprint of Little, Brown, where she has the privilege of working with some bestselling authors of literary-commercial crossover fiction and crime and thrillers. She began her career in publishing seven years ago on Penguin Random House’s entry level recruitment programme, The Scheme, and then worked at Viking for three years on their commercial and literary fiction lists before joining Sphere.
Born in Berlin, Demet Hoffmeyer-Zlotnik came to London in 2015 for her master’s in children’s literature and stayed to work in publishing. She previously worked for Imago Publishing as a Sales and Production Controller working with clients all over Europe. Before moving to Little Tiger two years ago, where she is now a Senior Production Controller and works on a variety of children’s books from Nibbles the Bedtime Book to If You Still Recognise Me by Cynthia So.
Elizabeth Jenner is an Editorial Director at Nosy Crow, specialising in children’s gift and non-fiction illustrated publishing. She has over 15 years of in-house experience in publishing, including commissioning, list-building and strategy. She started her career at A&C Black on the children’s non-fiction list, and has also worked for Bloomsbury, Laurence King and Canelo. When not wrangling planets and dinosaurs, she is also an author and yoga teacher.
Molly Ker Hawn joined the Bent Agency in 2012 and leads their London office, where she works with authors from all over the world, selling directly to publishers in the US, the UK, Canada, and Australia. She represents authors for children and young adults whose books have been New York Times, Sunday Times and international bestsellers and that have won and been shortlisted for the Costa Children’s Book Award, the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize, the William C. Morris YA Debut Award, the Michael L. Printz Award, the Barnes & Noble Children’s Book Award, the Carnegie Medal, the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis, and more.
Tilda Key is a Publishing Director at Sphere Fiction (an imprint of Little, Brown). She mainly edits and publishes crime and thriller fiction, including global brands Colleen Hoover, Patricia Cornwell and Clare Mackintosh, as well as acquiring historical fiction that shines a light on stories we haven’t seen before. She started her career in a small independent digital publisher and has since worked at Harlequin UK, Penguin Michael Joseph and Avon (HarperCollins), before joining Sphere in 2021.
After working as a bookseller and a book buyer on London’s Charing Cross Road for several years, Sophie Lambert moved to New York and spent three years there as an assistant at Janklow & Nesbit. She moved back to London and started her own list at Tibor Jones and Associates before joining C&W in 2013. She became a Director and later Managing Director, and was shortlisted for Agent of the Year in 2019. Alongside multiple Sunday Times bestselling authors, she represents authors who have been nominated for or won numerous prizes including the Booker Prize, the Women’s Prize, the Baillie Gifford, the Costa Book of the Year, the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year, the Ondaatje Prize, the Wainwright Prize, the Goldsmiths Prize, the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Jhalak Prize and the British Book of the Year Award.
Hope Ndaba is a publishing professional working in Publicity and Marketing. They have worked at a range of publishers including Profile Books, Vintage Books and Picador Books where they worked on highly-acclaimed and prize-winning titles such as Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies, Vladimir and the Jamaica Kincaid reissues within the Picador Collection . They were shortlisted for Best Debut Campaign for 2022’s PPC Annual Awards and they have also judged the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award on the shadow panel in 2020.
Norah Perkins is co-head of Curtis Brown Heritage, where she’s very proud to represent our literary estates. Her list spans modern classics, overlooked gems and national treasures, from novelists, poets and memoirists to gardeners, travellers and philosophers.
Emma Quick is Head of Marketing for Children’s Trade at Bonnier Books UK, and has executed high-profile and award-winning campaigns for authors including Holly Black, Garth Nix and E. Lockhart. She started her marketing career at the UK’s oldest literary magazine before moving into children’s publishing in 2018. In 2020, she joined Bonnier Books and launched the UK’s first publishing TikTok channel, @HotKeyBooks. In 2022, she was promoted to Head of Marketing and now manages the Children’s Marketing team.
Kirsty Stansfield has worked in children’s books for over 20 years. Her first job was at a literary agency before she moved to Scholastic Children’s Books, doing every editorial job there was before becoming Editorial Director. After a stint heading up Orchard’s fiction department at Hachette, she joined Nosy Crow in 2010 to create and develop its fiction list. She lives in London with her husband, three children and a cat called Benny.
Hannah Styles is the Rights Manager at Faber & Faber, where she sells translation and audio rights across both the adult and children’s lists. She sells rights into Scandinavia, Greece, Eastern Europe and Asia. Hannah worked at Ryland, Peters & Small as Rights Assistant where she managed the administrative side of co-editions, before joining Faber as Rights Assistant more than 5 years ago. At Faber, Hannah has worked across many different subrights and territories before settling into her current role.
Kate Wilson started working in publishing in 1986 and has worked in the industry ever since, mainly in children’s books. She started her career as a rights seller, and held senior management roles in publishing including MD of Macmillan Children’s Books and Group MD of Scholastic UK Ltd. She cares about good books, design, literacy and technology. In September 2011, she won the title of Inspirational Business Mum of the year at the MumpreneurUK awards, was named Most Inspiring Digital Publishing Person at the FutureBook Innovation Awards in November 2014, and in December 2016 received Women in Publishing’s Pandora Award for significant and sustained contribution to the publishing industry.
Ed Wood is Sphere Publishing Director for Brands and Creative Partnerships, and Little, Brown IP Director. He publishes crime fiction and book club bestsellers and award-winners including Mark Billingham, Chris Brookmyre, Jessica Fellowes, and Keith Stuart, and as well as international megabrand Tom Clancy. As IP Director, he guides and supports fellow editors across the Hachette group in conceiving and developing in-house-created titles, runs the group’s IP training programme, and liaises with film and TV companies. He is chair of the UEA Crime Award and leads the Daily Mail Prize.