Welcome to W&N.

 

Our passion for extraordinary writing dates back to our two founders, Lord Weidenfeld and Nigel Nicolson, who were responsible for introducing some of the twentieth-century’s most remarkable voices – Vladimir Nabokov, Isaiah Berlin, Eric Hobsbawm, and Nicolson’s own parents Sir Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West – to a wide readership. They launched their publishing house in 1949 with the idea of building bridges and opening minds through exceptional works of literature: we have been carrying on their legacy ever since.

 

Here, we introduce the editorial team behind W&N today.

 

Jenny Lord, Executive Publisher
Jenny oversees Orion’s three literary imprints – W&N, White Rabbit and Phoenix – and is also W&N’s publisher. She publishes in a wide range of categories, from politics to popular science, memoir to history, and can get excited about any subject for which the author has an infectious passion and an authentic story to tell. Before joining W&N in 2016, Jenny worked at both Canongate and Penguin and counts among the authors she has edited and published Ed Caesar, Annie Dillard, Caitlin Doughty, Ian Dunt, Jennifer Higgie, John Higgs, Olivia Laing, Alison Light, Amy Liptrot, Mark Kermode, Dorian Lynskey, Nesrine Malik, Henry Marsh, Samin Nosrat, Deborah Orr, Michael Palin, Adam Rutherford, Philippe Sands, Simon Sebag Montefiore, Anne Sebba, Naz Shah, Chimene Suleyman, Luke Turner and Malala Yousafzai.

 

 

Lettice Franklin, Deputy Publisher
Lettice is W&N’s Deputy Publisher. She looks for books that are intelligent, ambitious and immensely enjoyable. She has a fondness for books with a sense of humour (whether dark or light) but more than anything else, is drawn to exceptional writing, and would like her list to be defined by that. Lettice has worked with authors including Helen Garner, Naoise Dolan, Madeleine Gray, Claire Lombardo, Halle Butler, Elspeth Barker, Renata Adler, Laurie Colwin, Niamh Campbell and Katherine Heiny.

 

 

 

Juliet Annan, Publishing Director
Juliet publishes smart zeitgeisty fiction that sits in the sweet spot between literary and commercial, often funny; in non-fiction, she publishes historical and contemporary memoir. Juliet was a Publishing Director at Penguin Books where she founded the Fig Tree imprint. Her authors while at Penguin included Dolly Alderton, Anita Brookner (on whom she wrote her dissertation when she took a break from publishing to study for a Masters’ degree), Claire Fuller, Zoe Heller, Marina Lewycka, Penelope Lively, Rachel Roddy, Alexandra Shulman, Muriel Spark, Stanley Tucci, Bart Van Es and Florence Welch. Since arriving at W&N she has published novels by the Rev Richard Coles, Harriet Lane, Nussaibah Younis, Shelley Klein and Julianne Edwards, food memoir by Eleanor Steafel and the late Rachel Cooke, and memoir by Meera Syal.

 

 

Alexa von Hirschberg, Publishing Director
Alexa publishes bold and ambitious literary fiction that has the potential to find a wide readership; prize-winning novels and works of narrative non-fiction that are powered by ideas, politics, or history, whether intimate or vast in scope; novels that are inventive or original in some way; stories written with clarity and beauty. Alexa has worked at Faber & Faber, Bloomsbury and Canongate and has published authors including Will Ashon, Raymond Antrobus, Damian Barr, Sarah Brooks, Clare Chambers, Elinor Cleghorn, Patrick DeWitt, Reni Eddo-Lodge, Brian Eno, Zoe Gilbert, Johann Hari, Melissa Harrison, Jackie Kay, James McBride, Benjamin Myers, Ray Nayler, Don Paterson, Natasha Pulley, Lucy Rose, Samantha Shannon, Kae Tempest and Cosey Fanni Tutti.

 

 

Lily McIlwain, Commissioning Editor
Lily looks for non-fiction that illuminates the world we live in – and our relationships to one another – in fresh and fascinating ways. She reads widely across history, biography, tech, cultural criticism, psychology, nature and memoir, but above all else she loves to work with singular writers on singularly original subjects. At W&N she works with authors including Danny Bate, Nicholas Crane, Greg Jenner, Victor Sebestyen, Mark Solms and Petroc Trelawny.

 

 

 

Alice Graham, Assistant Editor
Alice joined W&N and White Rabbit as an editorial assistant in July 2022, having recently completed an MA in English Literature which examined the blurring of borders in Ali Smith’s Seasonal Quartet. She has a fondness for dark and illusive voices in literary fiction – those writers seeking to blur borders, explore intersections and get under the skin of their times. Her favourite writers include Max Porter, Daisy Johnson, Eimear McBride, Julia Armfield, Helen Oyeyemi, Toni Morrison and Rebecca Tamás. She is drawn to barbed, wild and uncanny stories – anything that seizes her with its strangeness.

 

 

Sienna Wadhwani, Editorial Assistant
Sienna joined W&N as an editorial assistant in July 2025. Their favourite writing blurs the lines between fiction and nonfiction; though their tastes range from ambitious politics writing to literary fiction and memoir. They’re excited by anything with a big idea, that’s smart, self-assured and beautifully expressed. Some of their favourite authors are Maggie Nelson, Paul B. Preciado, Arundhati Roy, Saidiya Hartman, Naomi Klein and Dennis Cooper.