SYP London Into Mentors 2023
SYP London is delighted to introduce the mentors for the 2023 SYP London Into stream, which is dedicated to helping those looking to secure their first permanent role in publishing. 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.
Alicja Baranowska is Rights Executive at Welbeck (Hachette). She sells rights to Hungary, Scandinavia, Poland and Greece, and supports sales in various other territories. She was SYP London co-Chair last year.
Nik Bhatia is the Sales, Rights & Marketing Director at Little Tiger Press. Nik was also the Founder of Liontree Publishing which was acquired by Little Tiger in 2019. In his day-to-day, Nik oversees all operations in the company’s UK & ROW Sales.
Alice Bidetti is a Senior Consultant at Inspired Selection, the specialist publishing recruitment agency. She studied English Literature in Rome and then moved to London to complete a Masters in Publishing at UCL. Before joining Inspired Selection in 2019, Alice interned with the Welbeck Group and Simon & Schuster, and then worked in an account management role for a digital B2B publication. At Inspired Selection, Alice specialises in placing candidates in role within the Academic publishing sector, working on a mix of permanent, contract and temporary assignments for clients within the scholarly, STM and academic fields.
Lizz Burrell is an Editorial Assistant at HarperFiction, working in their Crime and Thriller team. She has an MA in Publishing from UCL and loves reading genre fiction, in particular crime, romance and fantasy. She is passionate about championing the work of underrepresented authors in the industry. She also runs Assistants in Publishing, an informal group with monthly meetups for people beginning their careers in the industry.
Bethany Carter is the Children’s Publicity Manager at Faber working across picture books, middle-grade and YA. She is a PPC award-winning publicist and has also been shortlisted for the British Book Awards for Publicity Campaign of the Year. Bethany has previously held the role of Head of Events for SYP London.
César Castañeda Gámez joined C&W in January 2022 and is a Rights Executive in the translation department, working across the diverse list and wonderful authors C&W represents. Prior to joining the company, he worked for just over two years as a literary scout at RR Scouting. César is originally from Tenerife, in the Canary Islands/Spain, and speak both English and Spanish. He graduated from the University of Salamanca with a degree in English Studies, and holds master’s degree in Publishing from University College London.
Meg Chadderton moved down to London almost two years ago from a small town up North to follow her dream of working in children’s publishing. She works as a Design Assistant for the Caterpillar team at Little Tiger Press where she gets to design beautifully illustrated picture books, novelty board books and the odd non-fiction title. She also has five years of experience working with children and is always looking for ways to bring her two passions together: design and working with young people.
Helen Chapman has over 13 years’ worth of publishing experience working across a huge range of Children’s books from best-selling picture books, beautiful large non fiction titles, graphic novels, YA fiction covers and some of the biggest brands in children’s books. Helen is Senior Picture Book Designer at Little Tiger Press working with a fantastic team on some amazing books!
Olivia Davies has worked as an Assistant to two Literary Agents at United Agents since January 2020, completing two maternity covers during that time. Previous to this role, she worked briefly at Janklow & Nesbit in London and ‘A’ Literary Agency in Tbilisi, and before that taught English to secondary school students in Preston. She studied in Edinburgh and is originally from Bristol.
Philippa Donovan has scouted books for film and tv adaptations since 2008. She has worked with about 15 producers in the US, UK and Australia. She established an editorial consultancy, Smart Quill, in 2011, and since then she has helped hundreds of writers, recommending to literary, film and tv agents internationally.
Perry Emerson is a Senior Editor at Little Tiger Press, where he works in the picture book studio making books for the youngest of readers. When he’s not making books, he spends his time playing music and discovering new restaurants. Perry lives in London with his partner and their much-too-fluffy cat.
After pursuing several eclectic career paths as a jockey, comedy club manager, space museum curator, and English teacher, Jodi Fabbri began working in publishing with an editorial internship at Atlantic Books, followed by a scouting internship at Eccles Fisher Associates. From there, she worked as an agent’s assistant at Susanna Lea Associates. She joined Curtis Brown in 2018 as a Rights Executive in the translation department, working with authors like Margaret Atwood, Ann Patchett, Donna Tartt, Hanya Yanagihara, and Michael Chabon. In 2021, she moved over to Curtis Brown Heritage, and now handles the translation rights for their list of 150 literary estates.
Lauren Fairgrieve is a children’s book writer and editor who grew up in rural East Lothian, Scotland, and now lives in North London. She can often be found roaming Hampstead Heath or exploring a new part of the city, and is very proud and grateful to be able to edit and write fascinating children’s non-fiction for a living.
Rebecca Fletcher is a Senior Marketing Executive and Marketing Manager of the Higher Education team at Cambridge University Press, where she is responsible for the creation and delivery of campaigns for their Engineering and Life Sciences textbooks, also collaborating on team management and marketing strategy.
Laura Garcia Rodriguez is Rights Manager at Welbeck Publishing (part of Hachette). She looks after rights sales in Spain, Portugal, Germany, Italy, Latin America, Brazil, the Baltic, Serbia, Romania and Iceland.
Originally from the Netherlands, Tanja Goossens graduated in 2012 from her Bachelor in Media & Communication. After working in television for seven years, she moved to London and graduated from her Master in Publishing Media at Oxford Brookes in 2020. Tanja joined Curtis Brown as Translation Rights Executive in December of that year, before being promoted to Associate Rights Agent in 2022. She represents translation rights for 40-50 authors, which include bestselling authors like Bonnie Garmus, Emilia Hart, Gillian McAllister and Jojo Moyes.
Chelsea Graham is the Founder and Editor in Chief of The Publishing Post. The magazine offers publishing hopefuls both information for free, and the opportunity to gain experience within the publishing environment. Day to day she also works as an Editor across the Fiction Audio list at Bonnier Books, having previously worked at Bloomsbury, and was named a London Book Fair Rising Star of 2023 earlier this year. She also has experience of the entry-level hiring process, having hired for roles twice in her career so far.
Leena Gunamal is a Production Controller at the Quarto Group and works on Children’s illustrated non-fiction books. She loves reading romance and fantasy, dancing and is an avid traveller. Leena has an Optometry degree and after working as an Optometrist for many years, she moved into publishing.
Flick Hemming is the Agency Assistant at the Lorella Belli Literary Agency. LBLA represent a range of authors and publishing clients internationally and Flick works with a focus on Audio. She studied for a BA in Modern Foreign Languages at the University of Birmingham and used to work in operations at a speech and language therapy company. Before joining the LBLA team, Flick was a Waterstones Bookseller and interned at RR Scouting. She joined SYP in 2020 and was Co-Chair of SYP London in 2022.
Alice Hoskyns joined C&W in January 2022 as assistant to Sophie Lambert, having worked in the theatre and education industries for several years. She’s excited by books that seek to broaden – or challenge – our perspective of the world in vivid and original ways. Alice holds a BA in English from the University of Bristol and an MA in Acting from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama.
Lucy Houghton joined Nosy Crow as Key Account Manager in August 2022. She manages their relationships with supermarkets, high street children’s boutique chains, department stores and book shop chains – essentially anywhere and everywhere she can spread the Nosy Crow word and sell their inspiring list of children’s books! Before this, she spent 4 years at Faber and Faber, working across home and export sales for Faber and the fifteen publishers that make up the Independent Alliance.
Summer Lanchester moved to London two years ago from her hometown of Hartlepool (near Newcastle!) She works as a Campaigns Executive at Little Tiger, where she gets to shout about a whole host of wonderful authors and illustrators for a living. She loves all kinds of children’s books, but has a particular fondness for YA of the vampire variety.
Isobel Leach joined Curtis Brown in 2022 as Translation Rights Executive, working with Roxane Edouard on her list of primary French and Francophone clients and on the Children’s/YA List in translation. She started out as a bookseller at The Alligator’s Mouth, and after graduating, was a reader for literary agencies including Mushens Entertainment and worked at Cornerstones Literary Consultancy. Before joining Curtis Brown, Isobel spent a year in Edinburgh working in International Sales at Canongate.
Dredheza Maloku is Editor at Daunt Books Publishing, working across literary fiction, non-fiction and translated fiction. Her recent titles include two Ceila Dale reissues, an anthology on dogs called Dog Hearted and an upcoming contemporary novel called Take What You Need by Idra Novey. She was previously at Vintage, PRH, as Assistant Editor, working across the imprints, with a focus on the Harvill Secker list, and prior to that she was Editorial Assistant at Transworld, PRH, working with the Commercial Fiction team.
Helena Maybery joined Watson, Little in March 2022 as assistant to Managing Director James Wills. Helena graduated from The Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts with an Acting degree in 2018. After acting professionally for a few years, she began working in the world of books at a book subscription company in 2021, before joining the Watson, Little team. She loves to read widely, and is open to most genres, however tends to gravitate towards upmarket fiction that is female focused. Anything that is clever, full of intrigue and quality writing (with a sprinkling of romance), she’ll be into. In terms of non-fiction, Helena loves to read memoirs, almost as much as she enjoys reading about food. She loves writers who draw on food as a pathway into memories, with Laurie Colwin being her favourite food writer of all time.
Mila Melia-Kapoor is a Publicity Executive at Bloomsbury, where she works on non-fiction in their Special Interests division. Her first publishing role was at Profile Books as Publicity Assistant, during which she was also a Student Outreach Officer for SYP London. She graduated from The University of Nottingham in 2020 with a degree in Classical Civilisation. Having landed her first job in publishing through the The Mo Siewcharran Fund via Creative Access, she is passionate about making publishing more accessible to others from underrepresented backgrounds.
Meghan Meloy graduated from a master’s in Children’s Publishing from Bath Spa University in 2022. During her studies, she first interned then worked as a part-time Editorial Assistant with Gill McLay with the Bath Literary Agency. After completing her course, she worked as a Sales Administrator at Make Believe Ideas in Berkhamsted. Before her career in publishing, Meg studied German in her undergrad and taught English as a Second Language both in Germany and the United States (her home country). It was with her students that she discovered her love of audiobooks, which soon became her professional passion, so it’s with great pleasure and excitement she’s now able to work with children’s audiobooks every day as Assistant Audio Editor with Nosy Crow.
Catriona Paget joined C&W as Susan Armstrong’s assistant in 2022. After graduating university, she worked as a bookseller and completed an internship in marketing and publicity at a small Irish publisher, before taking an administerial role at a law firm.
Eleanor Marie Rose is a Senior Campaigns Executive at Bonnier Books UK in the children’s division. Prior to this, Eleanor worked as a Production Assistant at Bloomsbury Publishing for 2 years. Eleanor also manages a publishing YouTube channel; independently seeking gaps in publishing knowledge to plan, film and edit videos for viewers to learn. Her videos include interviews with publishing professionals, book reviews and general knowledge of the industry.
Matilda Singer is an Assistant Editor at Little, Brown Book Group, where she works across the Virago and Abacus literary imprints. She was previously Assistant Editor at Head of Zeus and before this spent four years as a bookseller at Blackwell’s Wellcome Collection. Outside of work, she is a volunteer for the children’s literacy charity Doorstep Library.
Kallie Townsend is the Publicity Assistant at Penguin Michael Joseph (Adult’s Commercial Fiction & Non-Fiction). She is currently working on the PR campaigns for The Ultimate Air Fryer Cookbook by Clare Andrews, Talking at Night by Claire Daverley and Call Time by Steve Jones. Previously to publishing, Kallie worked at Henley Literary Festival (where she gained an unhealthy addiction to Gower Cottage Brownies) – managing events, venues and the programme! Outside of work, Kallie is trying her best to resist trips to the theatre, exploring London and weekly dance classes and succumb to being a full-time cat lady.