Dutton Archives - Penguin Books

Ella Kurki, Assistant Editor

Grace Layer — Wed, 12 Jul 2023 18:03:26 +0000

Ella Kurki joined Dutton in February 2023, after starting her career at Penguin Michael Joseph in London. She loves voice and character-driven fiction with unique storytelling and unpredictable characters. On the nonfiction side, she’s interested in deeply researched stories that entertain, educate, and engage with contemporary issues. Ella has editorially contributed to Cherry Lou Sy’s Love Can’t Feed You, Nina St. Pierre’s Love Is a Burning Thing, and Timothy C. Winegard’s The Horse.

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Emi Ikkanda, Executive Editor

Caroline Payne — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 15:18:42 +0000

Emi Ikkanda is an Executive Editor acquiring nonfiction and select fiction projects at Tiny Reparations Books, Dutton, and Plume at Penguin Random House. She previously worked at Seal Press at Hachette, and Spiegel & Grau at Random House. She publishes a diverse list of award-winning, bestselling, and culturally relevant books. Over the years she has edited #1 New York Times and international bestselling authors, and edited winners or finalists for the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, Carnegie Medal, Financial Times Business Book of the Year Award, and the TIME 100.

Highlights on her list include #1 New York Times bestselling author Ijeoma Oluo’s Mediocre, Karla Cornejo Villavicencio’s National Book Award finalist The Undocumented Americans, Josephine Baker’s memoir Fearless and Free, Carla Power’s Pulitzer finalist Home, Land, Security, TIME 100 honoree Tourmaline’s Marsha, TikTok star and leadership coach John Wang’s Big Asian Energy, Minda Harts’s Right Within, Arianna Davis’s What Would Frida Do?, international bestselling novelist Michael David Lukas’s The Last Watchman of Old Cairo, Sanaë Lemoine’s New York Times Editor’s Choice The Margot Affair, NASA Astronaut Nicole Stott’s Back to Earth, and former Reddit CEO Ellen Pao’s Reset.

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Charlotte Peters, Assistant Editor

Grace Layer — Mon, 25 Jul 2022 18:32:41 +0000

Charlotte Peters joined Dutton in 2022. She is interested in commercial and genre fiction in unique, atmospheric settings that involve gothic, fantastical elements or dark institutions, escapist rom-coms simmering in magic (literal and figurative), character-driven “traditional” fantasy, and transportive romantasy, from epic to cozy. In nonfiction, she seeks relatable pop culture-focused works that appeal to enthusiastic fanbases, witchy lifestyle guides, and fun, quirky history. Upcoming titles include Your Favorite Scary Movie by Ashley Cullins, A Spell for Midwinter’s Heart by Morgan Lockhart, I Was Feeling Epic by Samantha Highfill, Into the Midnight Wood by Alexandra McCollum, and The Knox by Karen Winn.

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Lisset Lanza, Editorial Assistant

Grace Layer — Fri, 22 Apr 2022 18:07:07 +0000

Lisset Lanza joined Dutton in April 2022 as an editorial assistant. She previously reported on local news and politics and her published magazine work is focused on health and lifestyle content. Lisset hopes to acquire voice-driven literary and commercial fiction with a focus on cultural critique and family dynamics. She’s interested in themes of mysticism, morality, religion, community, rurality, and immigration. On the nonfiction side, she seeks personal narratives that underpin the exploration of big ideas in social reform and public policy. She’s also keen on informative works in areas such as nature, linguistics, and the humanities. Lisset graduated from New York University with a double major in Journalism and Social and Cultural Analysis.

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David Howe, Associate Editor

Charlotte Peters — Sun, 28 Nov 2021 18:04:00 +0000

David Howe joined Dutton as an Associate Editor in 2024 and acquires a wide range of nonfiction. On the prescriptive side, he looks for books that lead to healthier lives or demystify transformative concepts for a broader audience, written by authors who combine rigorous research with commercial appeal. In narrative nonfiction, he’s most interested in pop science and psychology, overlooked history, timely journalism, platform-driven memoir, and sports.

Before coming to Dutton, David was at HarperCollins and Hachette Book Group, where he worked with bestselling and award-winning authors including Tim Alberta, Douglas Brinkley, Natalie Haynes, Daniel Mendelsohn, Maria Ressa, Amity Shlaes, and Kevin Sites.

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Rachael Kelly, Editor

Charlotte Peters — Tue, 28 Sep 2021 19:58:00 +0000

Rachael Kelly is an Editor at Dutton acquiring commercial and upmarket/book club fiction across genres—stories that combine rapid pacing, nuanced character development, complex themes, and compelling hooks. She is building a list that prioritizes both voice and plot, and gravitates toward fiction that is romantic, escapist, suspenseful, mysterious, or psychological in nature, especially from authors with fresh perspectives and strong connections to their subject matter. Before joining the Dutton team in May 2024, Rachael worked at Grand Central Publishing, where she assisted with a number of New York Times bestselling authors, such as Colleen Hoover, David Baldacci, and Nicholas Sparks, while building her own list, including Maria Dong’s critically acclaimed Liar, Dreamer, Thief and Kehinde Fadipe’s #ReadWithJenna Today Show book club pick The Sun Sets in Singapore. Rachael is also open to select narrative nonfiction and memoir, especially works that reflect on culture, identity, singular experiences, and the lasting effects of history.

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Grace Layer, Associate Editor

Grace Layer — Mon, 27 Sep 2021 14:00:10 +0000

Grace Layer joined Dutton in January 2021 and acquires both fiction and nonfiction. She’s looking for smart narrative nonfiction, including investigative journalism, popular science, travel/food narratives, and character-driven stories that bring an unknown piece of history to light or dive into a propulsive mystery. On the fiction side, she’s interested in upmarket, voice-driven novels with genre elements that explore the complexities of friendships and family, as well as fresh, young takes on cozy mysteries. Across her list, she is seeking stories by and about BIPOC and LGBTQ+ individuals.

Grace’s recent and upcoming titles include American Scare by Edgar Award-winning journalist Robert Fieseler, an exposé on a Florida legislative committee who persecuted queer individuals and civil rights workers in the 1950s and 60s; Stronger by Michael Joseph Gross, a narrative exploration of the central role of muscle in human life; A Zoom with a View by Jess Cannon, a cozy millennial mystery set in a Texan liberal small town; and American Poison by bestselling author Daniel Stone, the untold story Alice Hamilton, a trailblazing labor rights and public health activist.

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Nick Amphlett, Senior Editor

Charlotte Peters — Wed, 15 Sep 2021 15:44:00 +0000

Nick Amphlett joined Dutton as a Senior Editor in September 2024. He acquires nonfiction, with particular interest in history, politics and current events, popular science, narrative nonfiction, biography, and sports.

Prior to Dutton, he spent ten years at William Morrow, where he edited a range of leading journalists, academics, and thought leaders, including recipients of the Pulitzer Prize, Nobel Prize, and NBA Finals MVP Award.

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Cassidy Sachs, Senior Editor

Grace Layer — Tue, 14 Sep 2021 20:51:42 +0000

Cassidy Sachs joined Dutton in 2017. She acquires across a broad range of fiction and nonfiction, and is drawn to books that lead with heart, humor, and a sense of empowerment. She is seeking joyful commercial and book club fiction that features strong, witchy women at its center. She is also on the lookout for narrative disrupting, expert-led nonfiction, and especially loves to work with trailblazing scholars and big-thinking journalists. For Plume, she is drawn to platform driven memoir, lifestyle, and pop-culture with a point.

Across both lists she has published nationally and New York Times bestselling books, has worked with award winning journalists and historians, and has published book club picks, GMA and Publishers Marketplace Buzz Books, #1 LibraryReads picks, ALA Award Winning titles, Next Big Idea Must Reads, and Goodreads Choice Awards nominees.

Cassidy’s previous and upcoming Dutton titles include How to Solve Your Own Murder by Kristen Perrin;bestselling author Catherine Walsh’s How to Write a Love Story; the nationally bestselling, TikTok viral Magnolia Parks Universeseries by Jessa Hastings; and Out of Love, a debut and Barnes and Noble monthly fiction pick by Hazel Hayes. New York Times bestselling The World’s Worst Assistant by Conan O’Brien’s longtime assistant Sona Movsesian; Nationally bestselling and Next Big Idea Must Read Break the Cycle by trauma psychologist Dr. Mariel Buque; The Highest Law in the Land, shortlisted for the J. Anthony Lukas Work-In-Progress Award by Jessica Pishko.

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Pilar Garcia-Brown, Senior Editor

Grace Layer — Tue, 14 Sep 2021 20:46:00 +0000

Pilar Garcia-Brown joined Dutton as a Senior Editor in September 2021. Previously, she worked at Mariner Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. She concentrates on fiction in multiple categories, as well as the occasional narrative nonfiction. She’s interested in voice and character-driven fiction that upends expectation or plays with genre, and is especially drawn to novels that tackle urgent, contemporary social and cultural themes in an irreverent or humorous way. On the nonfiction side, she is looking for hybrid memoir and essays.

Pilar’s recent and forthcoming titles include: the instant New York Times bestseller Black Buck by Mateo Askaripour and his sophomore novel, This Great Hemisphere; Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang, which won the Lambda Award for Bisexual Fiction and which will be produced for TV by Constance Wu; the National Book Award-nominated collection Holler, Child by LaToya Watkins; the National Book Award-nominated essay collection Magical/Realism by Vanessa Angélica Villarreal; the New York Times Editors’ Choice Old Enough by Haley Jakobson; Thirst by Marina Yuszczuk, a dual-period queer Gothic vampire novel set in Argentina; Cinema Love by Jiaming Tang, about gay men in rural China and the women who marry them, and which was a Dakota Johnson x TeaTime Book Club Pick; and Trust and Safety by Laura Blackett and Eve Gleichman, a smart, wickedly funny novel about a couple who move to the Hudson Valley and become entangled with a queer couple living the dream analog life.

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