Bella Lacey
Managing Director and Publishing Director, Granta Publications
I joined Granta in 2002 and became Publishing Director in 2019. My role is to shape and steer our publishing vision and strategies across the company. I love the power of the written word, the daring creativity of great writers which can change the way we think, and the pleasure of a well-made book. During my time here, I’ve been lucky enough to edit and publish some of the most exciting contemporary writers, including A. M. Homes, Lisa Halliday, Madeleine Thien, Julian Baggini, Barbara Demick, Barbara Ehrenreich, Rebecca Solnit, Madeleine Bunting, Carys Davies and Josh Cohen. A book I love from Granta’s backlist: Sven Lindqvist’s ‘Exterminate All the Brutes’, a mesmerising mixture of history and personal meditation, about the legacy of colonialism in 20th-century Europe. The books I reread: Middlemarch by George Eliot, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and poems by Emily Dickinson. The books I always recommend: that depends who you are, but I hope you’ll love Alison Bechdel’s Are You My Mother? Rachel Cusk’s Outline and Rose Tremain’s The Road Home.
