With a library of classics in its purview, Mariner Books carries on the tradition of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt with a continued celebration of a rich publishing legacy and a commitment to fostering new connections with established and burgeoning authors. PW chatted with Peter Hubbard, v-p editorial director; Kate Nintzel, v-p executive editor; and Rakia Clark, executive editor, about their rebranding of the HMH imprint and how they’re both honoring the past and looking forward to a bright and storied future.
What are the origins of the new Mariner Books? How does it fit within the larger umbrella of HarperCollins?
Hubbard: Mariner Books represents the rebirth of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) within HarperCollins, forming a dynamic new imprint with the soul of a heritage publisher.
Nintzel: Mariner Books is a prestige imprint within the powerhouse Morrow Group. We combine the editorial curation of a small list with the ambition and resources of a big publishing machine. It’s a pretty special space!
How would you describe the legacy of Mariner Books? How do you plan to carry that legacy onward?
Hubbard: Mariner proudly continues one of the great legacies in American publishing: dating to 1832, our heritage through HMH extends from Thoreau’s Walden to Mrs. Dalloway, 1984, The Lord of the Rings, Silent Spring, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Color Purple, American Pastoral, and The Interpreter of Maladies. It’s a ridiculously impressive history. Today, Mariner’s paperback catalog boasts enduring works by George Orwell, Virginia Woolf, Italo Calvino, Hannah Arendt, Philip K. Dick, Paul Theroux, Jhumpa Lahiri, Elmore Leonard, Alison Bechdel, and many more.
In planning the rebrand of Mariner, it was essential to us that we celebrate our backlist and look to it for our identity. To this end, we are excited to launch our new Mariner Books Classics imprint in 2023 with new editions of Ann Petry’s rediscovered masterpiece The Narrows, Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, and Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism. A robust reissue program will follow on each list, complementing our exciting frontlist hardcover program.
Clark: The Mariner list will be what the editors make it. I’m taking my taste and my sensibility and swinging for the fences in the same way that I always have—carefully considering agented submissions and developing ideas with writers on my own. I’m used to being scrappy. It’s nice when you don’t have to build a whole list that way, though. I’m excited about the HarperCollins publishing machinery that I’ve seen from afar be so effective on other book campaigns. Now I’m up close and I want some of that!
Can you describe the scope of both the nonfiction and the fiction lists for Mariner Books?
Nintzel: I’m so excited to see new fiction! It’s really exciting to have this curated space where we can spotlight writers and books we love. It’s been a tumultuous time in this country these past several years, to say the least, and I’m looking forward to seeing the fiction that comes out of it as writers grapple with our collective experience. Our fiction is forward-thinking: we bring new ideas and stories to readers. Whether it’s a stylistic form that challenges your idea of a narrative arc, an exploration of a moment of history that hasn’t been seen before, or a new, unique perspective on a theme that makes us reconsider the way we’ve thought about something, every Mariner novel engages with the world around us and explores the way we talk about it. We love voice, and we love to be surprised.
Hubbard: Our core nonfiction program strives to drive conversation on topics of consequence—be it politics, journalism, science, race, gender, business, or society. But we want to have fun, too! We’re sending many brilliant authors off to illuminate all that’s fascinating and awe-inspiring in the world. And we want to sell many books! We’ll partner with high-profile authors with large audiences who are committed to quality publishing. Whatever we do, we strive to publish every book with an ambitious vision.
How about some other highlights for upcoming titles?
Hubbard: On the nonfiction side this autumn, we have a major work of journalism by the New York Times’s business investigations editor, David Enrich, on the dark side of American law, titled Servants of the Damned. Later in the fall, we have President Obama’s chief speechwriter Cody Keenan’s Grace, a remarkable account of 10 days in the Obama presidency that changed the nation. In October, there’s American Midnight, a masterpiece by legendary historian Adam Hochschild (King Leopold’s Ghost), on the period between World War I and the Roaring Twenties, which saw the nation struggling to emerge from war and the Spanish flu pandemic, coupled with the rise of the KKK, anti-immigrant furor, and labor unrest. Plus, an unputdownable biography of Bo Jackson, The Last Folk Hero by sportswriter Jeff Pearlman, whose book on the Showtime Lakers was recently made into HBO’s buzzy blockbuster scripted show Winning Time. For Veterans Day, we have an unforgettable memoir by David Bellavia, the Iraq War’s only living Medal of Honor recipient. And just before the holidays, we’re launching the inside history of the greatest toy on Earth, The Story of LEGO, fully authorized by the LEGO company and featuring amazing color photographs from their archives.
Nintzel: Everything we do has to come back to the book: so that means thinking closely and carefully at all stages of the publishing process about the individual novel’s goals and ambitions and tailoring our editorial, marketing, and publicity plans to support that. The great fun of publishing is figuring out how to connect books to readers, and we have a dedicated, experienced team in place that is ready to figure out that puzzle for each and every Mariner book. We just published a searing collection of short stories, Self-Portrait with Ghost by Meng Jin, whose debut novel Little Gods was a finalist for both the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award and the Los Angeles Times’s Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction in 2020. The collection was written during the Trump years and the beginning of the pandemic, and it explores intimacy and isolation, power, and futility. There’s great texture to each individual story, but as a group they add up to a larger portrait of where we’ve been.
In the fall, we’re publishing Lynn Steger Strong’s new novel, Flight, which is just a knockout. Strong’s previous novel Want was on several best-of-the-year lists back in 2020, and this new novel explores similar territory of family, ambition, expectation, and the American safety net. It’s intimate in its storytelling but sweeping in its themes and exploration, and I think it’s going to be on everyone’s must-read list in the second half of this year.
And next spring we’re publishing Tara Conklin’s third novel, Community Board. Conklin’s a two-time New York Times bestseller; her previous novel, The Last Romantics, was the inaugural Read with Jenna pick. This new novel is sharp and funny, meant to be read in two settings: it’s about a woman who moves home to a small New England town and becomes embroiled in both the online message boards and small-town democracy.
Clark: I’ve got some upcoming titles that I get goosebumps just thinking about. Next year, I’m publishing a gripping and fascinating book about the Shakur family called An Amerikan Family. By name, people probably know Tupac and Assata. But the Shakurs were a whole collective—Black Panthers based on the East Coast who brought a different kind of energy to the Black liberation movement. The Shakurs were prominent and fierce, and the tentacles of their activism are still felt today. The author is a brilliant journalist named Santi Elijah Holley. It’s his first book. It’s a banger.
I also have a book about systemic abuse and harassment in Hollywood called Burn It Down coming next year. It goes beyond the individual cases we’ve all heard about and reckons with the behaviors, the lies, and the “norms” that have enabled abuse to continue. Veteran entertainment reporter Maureen Ryan is the writer. She’s fantastic. She’s great at the reporting and the storytelling. Maureen’s at Vanity Fair now, but she’s worked nearly everywhere.
A little further down the line, I have a book by a death doula. This one’s pretty special. In the same way that birth doulas are becoming a customary part of the birthing process, death doulas help people navigate their ends. Our country’s most preeminent death doula is an incredible woman named Alua Arthur. Her book is coming next fall. It’s a soulful book, full of big feelings, about how walking others to the very end of their lives has helped her live a better, more fulfilling, authentic, and satisfying life.
And then beyond that, my list is still goosebump-y. I’ve got a memoir about race, land, and legacy by one of the finest writers of our time, Latria Graham. Latria is a modern-day Zora Neale Hurston. I’m not even being hyperbolic. I also have culture critic Jeff Chang’s cultural biography of Bruce Lee. A book about silence-breaking for women in the Black community by Drew Dixon. An eye-opening look at the British monarchy and its role in the transatlantic slave trade, by a brilliant scholar named Brooke Newman. A biography of Whitney Houston that rightfully positions her as the door-opener for the type of Black female genius that rules our cultural and entertainment spaces today. There would be no Beyoncé. There would be no Issa Rae. The list goes on. This bio is a major, overdue reconsideration of her. Whitney was not just a voice.
And lastly, there’s a book I’ve been developing with an educator and activist named Kleaver Cruz. It’s called The Black Joy Project. The Black Joy Project is a love letter to Black joy around the world as a source of healing and resistance. It’s a beautifully written book with a big visual element, as well. That’s coming. Actually, there are a few things I’m developing, but I can’t talk about all of them yet!
