Meet the Team

William J. Thomas

William J. Thomas is the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Doubleday. He joined the company as Editor in 1993, became Editor-in-Chief in 1998, and Publisher and Editor-in-Chief in 2008. During his tenure Doubleday has published hundreds of New York Times bestsellers, eight Pulitzer Prize Winners, two National Book Award winners, five National Book Critics Circle Award winners, several finalists for these prizes, over 100 New York Times Book Review Notable Books of the Year, several of which were Top Ten choices, many dozens of B&N Discover picks, Amazon Best Books of the Year, and Indie Next Picks. 

In addition to his managerial duties, he also edits a select number of titles. New York Times bestsellers he has edited include the #1 bestsellers The Lost City of Z, The Wager, and Killers of the Flower Moon (National Book Award Finalist) by David Grann; the #1 bestsellers The Nickel Boys (Pulitzer Prize winner) and The Underground Railroad (Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner) by Colson Whitehead; Rogues, Empire of Pain (winner of the Baillie-Gifford Prize) and Say Nothing (National Book Critics Circle Award winner) by Patrick Radden Keefe; The Dark Side (Winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Prize, National Book Award finalist) and Dark Money (Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Prize) by Jane Mayer; On Desperate Ground, In the Kingdom of Ice, Hellhound on His Trail, Blood and Thunder, and Ghost Soldiers (Winner of the PEN USA Award) by Hampton Sides; The Red House, A Spot of Bother, and The Curious Incident of The Dog in the Night-Time (Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Award, the Whitbread Book of the Year, shortlisted for the Book Prize) by Mark Haddon; Lawrence in Arabia by Scott Anderson; The Wave, Voices in the Ocean, and The Underworld by Susan Casey; the #1 bestseller To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara; The Fortress of Solitude and Motherless Brooklyn (winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award) by Jonathan Lethem; The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender; Don’t Get Too Comfortable and Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish by David Rakoff; The River of Doubt, Destiny of the Republic, Hero of the Empire, and River of the Gods by Candice Millard; When McKinsey Comes to Town by Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe; K:  A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches by Tyler Kepner; Under the Banner of Heaven, Where Men Win Glory, and Missoula by Jon Krakauer; the #1 bestseller The Century by Peter Jennings and Todd Brewster; the #1 bestseller The Yankee Years by Joe Torre and Tom Verducci, and the #1 bestseller Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom. 

Kristine Puopolo

Kristine Puopolo is Vice President, Editorial Director, Nonfiction, at Doubleday Books. She has edited bestselling and prize-winning nonfiction at Penguin Random House since 2001, including three books that were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction–-Gulag (2003) by Anne Applebaum, The Dead Hand (2009) by David Hoffman, and Black Flags (2015) by Joby Warrick. She also directs the wellness program at Doubleday, which publishes expert-authored prescriptive books and memoir with a message. 

Her titles include the #1 New York Times bestseller Hidden Valley Road (2020) by Robert Kolker, one of the New York Times Book Review’s ten best books of the year, Under the Skin (2022) by Linda Villarosa, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Two Roads Home (2023) by Daniel Finkelstein, a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award, Twilight of Democracy (2020) by Anne Applebaum, The Evolution of Beauty (2017) by Richard Prum, one of the New York Times Book Review’s ten best books of the year and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and many New York Times bestsellers including: The Divider: Trump in the White House (2022) and The Man Who Ran Washington (2020) by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, More (2024) by Molly Roden Winter, I Survived Capitalism and All I Got was this Lousy T-shirt (2024) by TikTok star and CEO Madeline Pendleton, The Destructionists (2022) by Dana Milbank, Gods of the Upper Air (2019) by Charles King (finalist for The National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize), Richard Nixon (2017) by John A. Farrell (winner of the PEN Bograd/Weld Prize for Biography and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), The Billion Dollar Spy (2015) by David E. Hoffman, The General vs. the President (2016) by H. W. Brands, and The Teacher Wars (2014) by Dana Goldstein; plus Days of Fire (2013) by Peter Baker, one of the New York Times Book Review’s ten best books of the year, and Megan Stack’s Every Man in the Village is a Liar (2010), a finalist for the National Book Award. 

Kris welcomes a wide variety of non-fiction submissions, especially in history, politics, current affairs, biography, narrative nonfiction, psychology/self-help, personal finance, work/career, women’s issues, and memoir. 

Lee Boudreaux

Lee Boudreaux, Vice President and Executive Editor, joined Doubleday in 2018 and publishes exclusively fiction, seeking out unexpected stories and original voices in novels notable for their mastery of language and commanding narrative momentum. And, not infrequently, their razor-sharp sense of humor. She edited the #1 New York Times bestselling Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, which has sold over six million copies worldwide, as well as the New York Times bestselling debut The Most Fun We Ever Had by Claire Lombardo. Her current list of authors includes the prize-winning and critically acclaimed Margaret Atwood (forthcoming memoir), Kate Atkinson (Death at the Sign of the Rook, a Jackson Brodie book), Kelly Barnhill (When Women Were Dragons), Kevin Barry (The Heart in Winter), Clare Beams (The Garden), Michael Crummey (The Adversary), Percival Everett (James), Holly Gramazio (The Husbands), CJ Hauser (Family of Origin), Ron Rash (The Caretaker), and Colin Walsh (Kala).  

She began her career at Random House, became the Editor Director at Ecco, and had an eponymous imprint at Little, Brown. From the beginning, she honed an eye for rising talent, acquiring the early works of Patrick deWitt (The Sisters Brothers), Ben Fountain (Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk), Madeline Miller (Song of Achilles and Circe, each of which have sold over three million copies), Curtis Sittenfeld (Prep), Kevin Wilson (The Family Fang) and Nell Zink (Mislaid). She published the Pulitzer-prize winner Less by Andrew Sean Greer and the runaway horror hit Bird Box by Josh Malerman. Novels she has edited have been selected for the national book clubs of Oprah Winfrey, Good Morning America, Jenna Bush and Reese Witherspoon, and have won or been nominated for the National Book Award, the Booker Prize, the NBCC, the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Orange Prize, and numerous PEN awards. 

Edward Kastenmeier

Edward Kastenmeier is Vice President and Executive Editor at Doubleday Books. Previously Editorial Director of Anchor Books, he has worked for the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group since 1991. He has published the bestselling works of Michio Kaku, Alan Lightman, Chris McDougall, Andrea Wulf, Brian Greene, Simon Sebag Montefiore and Leonard Mlodinow. In 2016, he published Heather Ann Thompson’s Blood in the Water, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for History. He has also published the mystery/thrillers of Brendan Slocumb, Jo Nesbo, Lars Kepler, Dan Fesperman, Charlotte Vassell, Amy McCulloch, Alexander McCall Smith, and James Ellroy and the literary, genre-pushing works of Terry Pratchett, Mark Z. Danielewski, Nick Harkaway and Kevin Brockmeier. Edward is interested in science, technology, narrative nonfiction, and mystery.

Jason Kaufman

Jason Kaufman, Vice President and Executive Editor, has edited bestselling commercial fiction and nonfiction at Doubleday since 2001, including Dan Brown’s international bestseller, The Da Vinci Code, which has sold a combined 235 million copies around the world. In acquiring new authors, Jason is always looking for unique commercial storytelling with a suspense or thriller element—authors who step outside of conventional models. He recently published #1 New York Times bestselling author Stacey Abrams’ thriller, While Justice Sleeps, in addition to bestsellers by Lincoln Child, Daniel H. Wilson (Robopocalypse) and Jeff Lindsay (Dexter series). He has also published a variety of bestsellers in narrative nonfiction and sports, including award-winning authors John Feinstein (Where Nobody Knows Your Name), Leigh Montville (The Big Bam, Ted Williams) and George Friedman (The Next 100 Years). Prior to arriving at Doubleday, he worked at Pocket Books, HarperCollins, and Turtle Bay Books.

Thomas Gebremedhin

Thomas Gebremedhin, Vice President and Executive Editor, joined Doubleday in 2020 following nearly a decade in magazines. His first acquisition at Doubleday was Hua Hsu’s Stay True, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Memoir or Autobiography and the National Book Critics Circle Award in Autobiography. Stay True was also named one of the New York Times 100 best books of the 21st century. The first work of fiction that Thomas published at Doubleday, Beautiful Days, was named one of Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2024. In addition to Hua Hsu and Williams, some of the writers he works with include Maaza Mengiste, Kyle Chayka, Benjamin Moser, Amanda Hess, Jen Percy, Eric Puchner, Nell Irvin Painter, Julie Phillips, Josh Weil, David Klion, Aymann Ismail, Tao Leigh Goffe, Richard Rhodes, and Kam Austin Collins. His authors have won or been finalists for the Pulitzer Prize, the Booker Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the PEN/ Faulkner Award for Fiction, and they have been cited on the annual New York Times Best Books of the Year list among many other best-of lists. They have also made the New York Times bestseller list.

Prior to Doubleday, Thomas was a print editor at The Atlantic as well as the magazine’s fiction editor. Since joining Doubleday, he has acquired and developed works of memoir, biography, history, criticism, essays, and literary fiction; he is drawn to writers who interrogate themes of cultural, sociological, intellectual, or personal significance. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (MFA), he believes that the best books begin at the level of the sentence.

Carolyn Williams

Carolyn Williams, Editor, joined Doubleday in 2016, and acquires book club and upmarket commercial fiction and select nonfiction. She’s always on the lookout for page-turning novels featuring smart women, unreliable narrators, twisty plots, and memorable families, as well as narrative nonfiction, especially memoirs and social or cultural histories. She gravitates toward plot-forward stories written from a new or outsider perspective, historical settings with a modern edge, literary and domestic suspense, coming-of-age stories, immigrant experiences, family sagas, realistic dialogue, stories with an emphasis on class disparity or social climbing, and contemporary novels featuring noir or procedural beats. Recent and upcoming projects include New York Times bestselling author Ariel Lawhon’s GMA book club pick The Frozen River, national bestseller and Indie Next pick Do Tell by Lindsay Lynch, Flora Carr’s The Tower, Allison Epstein’s A Tip for the Hangman and Let the Dead Bury the Dead, Caroline Woods’ The Lunar Housewife and The Mesmerist, Stephen Spotswood’s Edgar-nominated Pentecost and Parker Mysteries, Sarah K. Jackson’s Not Alone, award-winning journalist Julie Satow’s When Women Ran Fifth Avenue, and Alison Fragale’s Likeable Badass. Originally from Massachusetts, she lives in New York with her husband.

Cara Reilly

Cara Reilly joined Doubleday in 2018 and edits fiction and narrative nonfiction. She has published critically acclaimed books such as Meg Howrey’s They’re Going to Love You, Priya Guns’s Your Driver is Waiting, and Aisha Abdel Gawad’s Between Two Moons. Her forthcoming titles include Katherine Rundell’s award-winning Vanishing Treasures, Shefali Luthra’s Undue Burden, Andrew Boryga’s Victim, Chukwuebuka Ibeh’s Blessings, Timothy Schaffert’s Titanic Survivors Book Club, and Charlotte Runcie’s Bring the House Down. Other authors she has worked with include National Book Award and Pulitzer finalist Ingrid Rojas Contreras, Granta’s Best Young British Novelist Eley Williams, Lambda finalist CJ Hauser, and Sperber Prize finalist Judith Mackrell. She gravitates toward fiction with a fresh voice that makes her feel something—particularly stories with a multigenerational narrative, sociopolitical bent, or dual timeline—as well as immersive, investigative works of journalism, history that fills a gap on the bookshelf, and memoirs that add to the cultural conversation. Raised in Maryland, she began her publishing career at Sterling Lord Literistic and Grove/Atlantic. 

Khari Dawkins

Khari Dawkins is an Associate Editor at Doubleday. A Bronx native, he earned his B.A. in Political Economy from Williams College.  He assists Bill Thomas with his titles and editorial department duties, as well as acquiring his own projects. His recent acquisitions include THE SECRET RACIST HISTORY OF EVERYTHING by Kali Holloway which studies the racist origins of many American institutions, A HOLLYWOOD ENDING by Yaron Weitzman that follows the last years of basketball star LeBron James career with the Lakers, and ALL OF THE LIGHTS by Neil Shah which examines the place of rap in the music industry over the last decade. Khari is most excited by stories, fiction and nonfiction, that are immersive in their story-telling and compelling at the line level.  He is interested in acquiring a range of nonfiction, including excavated and recontextualized histories, cultural criticism, and narrative journalism.  He especially loves to come up with ideas for books that should be written, and work with agents to find writers who can bring them to fruition. 

Chris Howard-Woods

Chris Howard-Woods joined Vintage Anchor in 2019 and moved to Doubleday in fall 2023. He focuses primarily on nonfiction, and his forthcoming titles include Bettany Hughes’s The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, Arthur Goldwag’s The Politics of Fear, and an untitled work on dolphin intelligence by Kelly Jaakkola. He is also working with the estate of Chester Himes on a number of reissues. He’s interested in nature, history, psychology, medicine, pop culture, memoir, essays and criticism, and issue-driven non-fiction. He’s looking for immersive storytelling about subjects that speak to a wide readership as well as strong voices that offer readers a new or underexplored perspective. On the fiction side, he’s interested in pacey, deeply felt reads, especially ones that touch on an interesting cultural issue or take readers to an unexpected place. Chris is from Virginia and has previous experience at OR Books and W. W. Norton. 

Johanna Zwirner

Johanna Zwirner is an Assistant Editor at Doubleday, where she supports Thomas Gebremedhin, VP, Executive Editor and Carolyn Williams, Editor. She works across literary fiction and nonfiction, finding herself drawn to writers that incorporate humor in their storytelling and showcase a deep appreciation for language at the line level. She is interested in the meeting points of visual art and personal narrative. She is also compelled by investigative nonfiction that uses meticulous reportage to uncover and attempt to rectify social injustices. A few of her favorite books include Nell Zink’s Mislaid, Patrick Radden Keefe’s Empire of Pain, Sally Mann’s Hold Still, and Melissa Febos’ Girlhood. The first author she worked with at Doubleday was Hua Hsu, whose memoir Stay True won the Pulitzer Prize in memoir and the National Book Critics Circle Award in autobiography. She has worked with Nell Irvin Painter, Maaza Mengiste, Amanda Hess, and Kyle Chayka, among many other acclaimed authors. She studied English at Barnard College and was in the editorial department at Kirkus Reviews before joining Doubleday, and she is a contributing editor for November Magazine. She lives in New York.

Ana Espinoza

Ana Espinoza is an Assistant Editor at Doubleday, where she supports Kris Puopolo, VP, Editorial Director, Nonfiction. She’s drawn to narrative and idea-driven nonfiction, including memoir, that challenges the status quo and has an undercurrent of hope. She’s also interested in fresh prescriptive nonfiction for Gen Z and Millennial audiences. Topics that interest her include the future of work, mental health, the natural world, and the immigrant experience, among others. Some of her favorite books are Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass, Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing, Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks, and Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights. She has worked with bestselling and award-winning authors including Stacey Abrams, Peter Baker & Susan Glasser, Ingrid Rojas Contreras, Linda Villarosa, and Qian Julie Wang. A graduate of Columbia University, Ana worked for the Columbia Publishing Course and the subsidiary rights department at Writers House before joining Doubleday. She lives in Brooklyn.

Lily Dondoshansky

Lily Dondoshansky joined Doubleday as an Editorial Assistant in 2022, supporting Jason Kaufman and Cara Reilly. Previously, she interned at Smithsonian Books in Washington, DC and received B.A.s in English Literature and Government and Politics from the University of Maryland. She is drawn to character-driven, upmarket historical and contemporary fiction, as well as smart thrillers with a sharp voice and bright female characters. On the nonfiction side, she gravitates toward culturally relevant narrative nonfiction and social criticism that bridges the gaps in our understanding of history and politics.

Maya Chakrabarti Pasic

Maya Chakrabarti Pasic is an Editorial Assistant at Doubleday, where she supports Lee Boudreaux. She is a recent graduate of Yale University, where she majored in History and English with a focus on the role of reading and English curricula in building the British Empire. She’s drawn to fiction that feels specific and unpretentious and alive. An avid reader of sci-fi and fantasy, she was Yale’s 2022-2023 Frederick Mortimer Clapp Fellow in Poetry. She lives in Brooklyn.

Meet the Team

Lexy Bloom

Editorial Director, Knopf Cooks

Lexy Bloom oversees Knopf Cooks, our culinary program, for which she acquires and edit cookbooks and food writing, as well as manages the cookbook backlist, home to authors such as Julia Child, Marcella Hazan, Madhur Jaffrey, and Edna Lewis. Knopf Cooks publishes voice-driven, upmarket yet accessible cookbooks that lend a distinct perspective to a cuisine or culture, from Sohla el-Waylly to Deb Perelman, from Hetty McKinnon to Kwame Onwuachi, from restaurants like Via Carota to Sofreh. Additionally, she works with authors of literary fiction and nonfiction such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Haruki Murakami, and Orhan Pamuk. 

Emily Cunningham

Executive Editor

Emily edits nonfiction across a variety of genres, including history, memoir, biography, and narrative journalism. Prior to joining Knopf, she spent nine years at Penguin Press, where her list included the New York Times bestsellers Good For a Girl by Lauren Fleshman and The Daughters of Kobani by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon; Andrew Leland’s The Country of the Blind, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; and Tahir Hamut Izgil’s Waiting to Be Arrested at Night, winner of a National Book Critics Circle Award. Earlier in her career, Emily held positions at Harper and Grove Atlantic. She is a native of the Boston area and lives in Brooklyn. 

Isabel Ribeiro

Editorial Assistant

Isabel Frey Ribeiro is an editorial assistant who loves literary, international, and historical fiction and narrative nonfiction, including history and memoir; she enjoys reading in English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish. Projects she has worked on at Knopf include fiction by Sandra Cisneros, Elif Shafak, Toni Morrison, Rachel Khong, Marie NDiaye, and Martin Walker; nonfiction by Nicholas Kristof, Tracy K. Smith, Kenneth Roth, Jonathan Raban, Philip Shenon, and Paul Hendrickson; and poetry by Linnea Axelsson, Tayi Tibble, and Mosab Abu Toha. Before her time at Knopf, she studied history at Williams College, tutored writing, and worked as an organizer for the Busload of Books Tour. 

Rob Shapiro

Assistant Editor

Rob Shapiro received an MFA from the University of Virginia, and his writing has appeared in Ploughshares, AGNI, New England Review, and The Southern Review. Projects he has worked on include fiction by Joyce Carol Oates, Jayne Anne Phillips, Russell Banks, and Hari Kunzru; nonfiction by Amy Tan, Beverly Lowry, and Lauren Hough; and poetry by Michael Ondaatje, Margaret Atwood, and Nicole Sealey. 

Tiara Sharma

Assistant Editor

Tiara Sharma is an assistant editor interested in literary and upmarket fiction, and poetry, that is formally inventive, sharply observational, or propelled by an unforgettable voice. Across nonfiction, they are drawn to histories of social movements, cultural criticism, political theory, memoir, reportage, and books that meld genres and disciplines. In their time at Knopf, they have worked with best-selling and award-winning authors such as Ken Burns, Kevin Kwan, Gabrielle Zevin, Bill Clinton, Dolly Alderton, John Vaillant, Gary J. Bass, Michael Finkel, J. Courtney Sullivan, and Chris Bohjalian. Before joining Knopf Editorial, Tiara worked at the Penguin Random House Speakers Bureau and interned at n+1. They were born in Jammu, India and live in Brooklyn, NY.  

Zuleima Ugalde

Editorial Assistant

Zuleima Ugalde is an editorial assistant at Pantheon, Schocken, and Alfred A. Knopf, supporting the desks of Deb Garrison and Ben Hyman. At Knopf, Zuleima has worked alongside authors such as Robin Coste Lewis, Amitava Kumar, Clare Sestanovich, Leila Mottley, Kay Redfield Jamison, Jane Hirshfield, David Remnick, Elliot Ackerman, Richie Hofmann, Michael Dickman, Ramie Targoff, Garth Risk Hallberg, and many others. Her favorite reads include literary fiction that is thought-provoking, transportive historical fiction that captures a unique sense of time and place, and narrative and literary nonfiction projects with a spirit of intellectual inquiry, and she is looking to acquire books along the same vein. She lives in New York City and enjoys searching for good reading spots throughout the city.