Working with Words: Exploring Careers in Publishing, Writing & Storytelling

Join us for an exciting event jointly organised by the Department of English in the School of the Arts, Queen Mary University London and The Wilbur & Niso Smith Foundation.

A debut author has written a novel. What happens next?

Three publishing professionals will take you through the steps that take that novel from the author’s computer to the bookshop shelves. You will hear from an agent, an editor and a publicist, who all work in different parts of the industry and are vital to this process.

Each speaker will share what they do, how they got there, and what their day-to-day looks like, using real-life industry examples. If you’re curious about a career in publishing, this will help you consider which role might be the best fit for you.

The speakers are:

John Baker, Literary Agent at Bell Lomax Moreton Agency

John joined Bell Lomax Moreton in 2019, cultivating a list shaped around his passion for science fiction, fantasy, and horror, though has lately also branched out into action/adventure fiction. John focuses on authors writing in the Adult, New Adult, and YA spaces.

John also leads the wider agency's film & TV desk, is the Secretary of the Association of Author’s Agents, and the co-chair of the AAA’s Bridge Committee. He also serves on the Kingston University MA Publishing Advisory Board.

John has built a reputation as a champion of underrepresented voices and stories, be it from creators hailing from the global majority and their diasporas or neurodiverse authors, and naturally gravitates towards this kind of storytelling.

Cal Kenny, Senior Commissioning Editor at Sphere (Hachette)

Cal started their career at Bloomsbury Publishing and is now a senior commissioning editor at Sphere fiction (Hachette). Starting from intern, they worked their way up, working across fiction, non-fiction and children’s.

At Sphere, Cal works primarily with crime and thriller novels but also across the wider fiction market. They publish authors such as Justin Myers, Ryan O’Connell and Emma Styles, as well as working with huge bestselling authors such as Val McDermid and Mark Billingham.

Recently they were a judge of Hachette Pride's Grow Your Story scheme, which provides ten un-agented fiction writers, who identify as LGBTQ+ and have not been traditionally published, with the opportunity to develop their novels.

Hope Ndaba, Senior Publicity Manager at Bonnier Books UK

Hope is senior publicity manager at Bonnier, having previously worked at FMcM as communications manager. She has delivered publicity campaigns for a range of titles from

Dialogue Books and ran marketing campaigns for clients such as Thomas Heatherwick and prizes such as the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. Prior to this, Hope also worked in both marketing and publicity at Picador Books, launching debuts such as Julia May Jonas’s Vladimir and Maddie Mortimer’s Booker-longlisted Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies.

Outside of her day-to-day, she serves on the And Other Stories board of trustees, and recently participated on a panel for the PEN Translates Award.

Panel Chair:

Dr Rachael Allen, BA (Goldsmiths), PhD (Hull)

I was born and grew up in Cornwall, moving to London to study English Literature at Goldsmiths University. At Goldsmiths I started an event and anthology series called clinic, which developed into a small press. I have been publishing ever since, working for a decade at the literary quarterly Granta Magazine, and publishing a poetry list for Granta Books. My authors include writers like Will Harris, Daisy Lafarge, Holly Pester, Stephanie Sy-Quia, Will Alexander and others. I completed a PhD at the University of Hull. My doctoral research identified an anglophone, feminist lyric emerging in the Anthropocene, looking at the poets Ariana Reines, Sylvia Legris, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge and Selima Hill, and the collection of poems I wrote during this time, Kingdomland, was published by Faber and Faber in 2019.

The panel will be followed by a Q&A and reception, so you have a chance to ask the speakers questions about their experience and the career you’re most interested in.

Arrival from 6.15 p.m. for a 6.30 p.m. start, closing at 7.45 p.m. The event will be followed by a reception until 9.00 p.m.