After moving their eponymous imprint from HarperCollins Children's Books to Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group last spring, publishers Alessandra Balzer and Donna Bray of Balzer + Bray have announced their inaugural list, to be published in winter and spring 2026. With books such as Angie Thomas’s The Hate U Give (edited by Bray), Ibi Zoboi’s Nigeria Jones, and The Lesbiana’s Guide to Catholic School by Sonora Reyes (edited by Balzer) in their portfolio, the publishers have established a reputation for books at the intersection of literary and commercial fiction. At Macmillan, the imprint will start small, with 10 titles within a mix of categories: three picture books, four middle grade books, and three YA novels.
The Balzer + Bray imprint launched at Harper in 2009. Both publishers had held leadership roles at Hyperion Books for Children, with Bray serving as editorial director and Balzer as executive editor. At Harper, the co-publishers released an array of bestsellers and award winners. After 16 years, Bray said the move to Macmillan was “the right opportunity at the right time.” Their time at Harper was “really wonderful and we built a great list there,” she said, “but we were just ready for a change. It was a new challenge—to do what we love to do in a new environment with new people.” VP and co-publisher Alessandra Balzer called the change “energizing.”
“Our tastes, mission, and philosophy remain the same,” Balzer added. “We’re going to continue to publish bold innovative books that appeal directly to kids. We’re never led by trends or by necessarily what’s hot in the market. Things are constantly evolving and changing.”
VP and co-publisher Donna Bray added, “We’re always looking for authors who have something to say to kids at this time—high quality, great storytelling, voices that will stand the test of time, but that also feel current.” The inaugural list features authors who “write like nobody else does,” she continued. “They really respect kids and write so beautifully in their different ways.”
Among those featured on the initial list are Sara Pennypacker (the Clementine series), who has worked with Bray before, and Jasmine Warga (Other Words for Home) and Ibi Zoboi (Nigeria Jones), who have published with both editors across their careers. “It feels like kismet that we have such a nice mix of former authors that we love and new people,” Balzer said. While all the authors on the inaugural list have been previously published, “some are new to us and some are doing work that’s different from what they’ve done in the past,” she added.
The imprint’s picture book list includes Call Me Moby, the first author-illustrated title by New Yorker cartoonist and television writer Lars Kenseth. “It’s a story that has a lot of heart,” Bray said. Adults familiar with Moby-Dick will understand the references, but for kids, it’s “a story of a whale who just wants to make friends and doesn’t understand why the sailors don’t want to be friends with him.”
Coretta Scott King winner and Caldecott Honoree Christian Robinson’s picture book Dad is destined to “make people cry,” Bray said. The story focuses on different kinds of fathers, including animal and human dads, and different sorts of father-child relationships. “All the very best books can be read on so many levels. A parent reading it to a child will understand the layers of the text, but [Dad] also can just be taken at face value,” Bray added.
In the middle grade category, Balzer + Bray will publish Spindlewood, the first novel for this age group by Freddie Kölsch, who made her YA debut with Now, Conjurers in 2024. Spindlewood is described by Bray as having “Wednesday Addams vibes,” centering on a girl who “winds up at a boarding school for seers even though she cannot see ghosts and is very skeptical.”
Also on the middle grade list is The Serpent, the Rainbow, the Island Below by Ibi Zoboi. Being “very cognizant of how Haiti is represented in the news,” Balzer said, Zoboi “takes that and creates this incredible middle-grade fantasy about kids who are the descendants of Voudou gods. It’s her way of speaking to that moment and sort of taking back that narrative. She can do it like no one else can.” Balzer added that the story is “incredibly escapist” with “all the things that kids love about fantasy, friendship, and characterization.”
Bray said she’s always looking for stories that are “funny, intriguing, pacy and fresh, but also have a lot of heart, so we have a real emotional connection to the story.” She found it all in Augusta Pine Does Not Exist by Emily Lloyd Jones (The Bone Houses). Set in the near future, the book features a young hacker who uses her criminal skills and knowledge to solve crimes with a secret government agency. Bray described it as gripping and intense, with a bit of mystery.
Peter Bognanni (This Book Is Not Yet Rated) has written for both adults and teens. His new YA, How to Lose Yourself Completely, is about a boy grappling with grief and anxiety who enrolls in an adventure therapy program. Balzer said that the novel’s themes resonate especially strongly for teens these days and that, while there are elements of escapism in the story, it also has a lot of heart. The narrative voice is second person, which makes it especially gripping from the beginning, she added.
In their new home at Macmillan, the imprint has a staff of three: Balzer, Bray and their assistant, Lavell Nero. Starting with a small list has allowed the editors to be involved in each part of the process. “We very much love being in the weeds with the author and the artist and the team. It’s such a collaborative process for us. We care so passionately about it and of course we take very seriously that we’re shepherding these authors’ book babies into the world,” Balzer said.
Currently the plan is to slowly build to around 24 books a year. While they don’t have any debut authors on the initial list, introducing new voices is something that’s important to the publishers and they anticipate doing so as time goes on. “We’re known for having a really strong vision for a book from acquisition,” Bray said, adding that the team “really needs to feel that we can be the best publisher for any given book that we bring on.”
While the exact dates aren’t finalized yet, the first Balzer + Bray titles under Macmillan will publish in January 2026.
