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Knopf

Alfred A. Knopf

Founded in 1915, Alfred A Knopf has long had a reputation as a publisher of distinguished, beautifully designed, award-winning books. It is an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, which is a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Their parent company is Bertelsmann AG, the international media company. Knopf’s authors include numerous winners of Nobel and Pulitzer Prizes, National Book Awards, and National Book Critics Circle Awards.

Knopf authors include Kazuo Ishiguro, Tommy Orange, Orhan Pamuk, Robert A. Caro, Sheryl Sandberg, Cormac McCarthy, Richard Russo, Jhumpa Lahiri, Anne Tyler, Haruki Murakami, Bill Gates, Jane Smiley, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Maggie O’Farrell, Charles Mann, Andre Agassi, Casey Cep, T.J. Stiles, Lawrence Wright, Yaa Gyasi, Emily St. John Mandel, Paulo Coelho, Carl Hiassen, Joyce Carol Oates, Cheryl Strayed, Ken Burns, Gabrielle Zevin, Michelle Zauner. Our esteemed list of poets includes Charles Simic, Kevin Young, Sandra Cisneros, Jane Hirshfield, and Sharon Olds. The Knopf Cooks list has a long and illustrious history, from Julia Child, Edna Lewis, and Marcella Hazan to Madhur Jaffrey, Deb Perlman, Kwame Onwuachi, and Sohla al Waylly. Knopf also publishes Toni Morrison, Alice Munro, James Baldwin, Russell Banks, Joan Didion, Gabriel García Márquez, Stieg Larsson, and Anne Rice.

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. 

Brian Etling

Assistant Editor  

Brian Etling is an assistant editor at Alfred A. Knopf interested in inventive and risk-taking literary fiction, science fiction and fantasy, literature in translation, and nonfiction with a focus on culture, music, nature, and memoir. In his time with the Knopf Doubleday Group, he has been fortunate to work with many bestselling and award-winning authors including James Ellroy, Mark Z. Danielewski, Alexander McCall Smith, Jo Nesbø, Paolo Bacigalupi, Andrea Wulf, Simon Sebag Montefiore, Leonard Mlodinow, and Michio Kaku. His authors at Vintage include Juneau Black, Charlotte Carter, and Kirsty Manning. Prior to joining Knopf, he worked in Sales for Penguin Random House, and before that he was the manager of an independent bookstore in North Carolina. He lives in Manhattan.

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

Editorial Assistant

Tiara Sharma is an editorial assistant 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.  

Ben Shields

Editorial Assistant

Ben Shields reports to editors Quynh Do and Todd Portnowitz and continues to assist Vicky Wilson in her consultant role at Knopf. He is interested in upmarket fiction, gay men’s fiction, biography, cultural criticism, Middle East politics, and popular histories of religion, empire, and civilizations. He is the managing editor of GRAND journal. His journalism and critical work have appeared in Bookforum, Paris Review Daily, the Mars Review of Books, and elsewhere.  

Zuleima Ugalde

Editorial Assistant

Zuleima Ugalde is an editorial assistant at Pantheon and Alfred A. Knopf, supporting the desks of Deb Garrison and Diana Miller. 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. 

Knopf Doubleday