Now that Washington Square Press is in the market for frontlist titles, how are you distinguishing the list from Atria’s?
What WSP allows us to do is take some of the kinds of books that Atria could always have published and gives us a place to collect the ones that might have gotten a bit lost on a list where we’re publishing 100, 120 books a year. We’re going to do 12–15 a year at WSP. There are no dedicated WSP staffers, but editors can buy for WSP and for Atria. It gives them the ability to publish a wide variety of fiction and allows the WSP list to grow its own identity within the big Atria machine. Atria editor-in-chief Peter Borland, for example, has Heather McGowan’s Friends of the Museum coming from WSP in April, and he also has Janet Evanovich at Atria.
One of your first titles is a new translation of Alba de Céspedes’s 1938 novel There’s No Turning Back. Does this mean there’s still room for the backlist at WSP?
When you’re building a new list, there’s always emphasis on new acquisitions and frontlist titles. And we have an incredible debut novel at the end of the month, Grand Scheme of Things by Warona Jay, that’s set in the London theater scene. It’s really sharp. There’s No Turning Back is One Signal publisher Alessandra Bastagli’s book, her vision, and we’re redoing three bell hooks collections this summer. Atria has a history in international publishing and a rich backlist. We can build a list with smart acquisitions, pulling from what we have when it feels like it’s freshly relevant.
