Laura Barber
Associate Publishing Director, Granta Books
My publishing career began with editing my college newspaper, summer work experience and a stint as a literary agent’s assistant in New York before my first proper job at Penguin, where I ended up running the Penguin Classics list. I joined Granta Books in 2011, having previously worked with its sister imprint, Portobello Books. My authors include Anuk Arudpragasam, Tom Bullough, Caroline Crampton, Hattie Crisell, Jenny Erpenbeck, Caspar Henderson, Cynan Jones, Hiromi Kawakami, Etgar Keret, Ben Lerner, Philip Marsden, Anna Metcalfe, Jenny Offill, and Amy Sackville. I’ve also edited several anthologies of poetry for Penguin and am a qualified yoga teacher. My favourite book in translation: War and Peace (translated by Anthony Briggs) – now I’ve finally read it, I feel obliged to celebrate this fact and that it really is as good as it’s famed to be. Honourable mentions to Javier Marías’s A Heart So White (translated by Margaret Jull Costa) and Chekhov’s A Life in Letters (translated by Rosamund Bartlett). The book I reread: It used to be Pride and Prejudice, but now it’s the Alfie books by Shirley Hughes and the Mog books by Judith Kerr, with my daughter.
