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Meet the Team
Denise Oswald
VP & Editor-in-Chief
Denise Oswald is vice president and editor-in-chief of Pantheon. She began her career at Farrar, Straus and Giroux, where she worked for thirteen years, managing the Faber list for ten. Prior to joining KDPG, she was executive editor at Ecco, where she oversaw the nonfiction list. Her areas of interest include current affairs, big-idea books, social justice, pop culture and cultural criticism, science, nature, and the environment. Her books have been the recipient of numerous awards, including PEN, Whiting, Discover, and, most recently, the Pulitzer Prize for Biography for Benjamin Moser’s Sontag and the National Book Award for Nonfiction for Imani Perry’s South to America. Among the national bestsellers she has published are Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton, Thanks, Obama by David Litt, Everybody Lies by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, Into the Raging Sea by Rachel Slade, Why Religion? by Elaine Pagels, The Book of Eels by Patrik Svensson, What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker by Damon Young, and the #1 New York Times bestsellers 10% Happier by Dan Harris and Down the Rabbit Hole by Holly Madison.
Deb Garrison
Executive Editor
Deb Garrison, formerly an editor at The New Yorker and the author of the bestselling poetry collection A Working Girl Can’t Win, joined book publishing in 2000 as the poetry editor at Alfred A. Knopf and a senior editor at Pantheon Books. Her areas of interest include poetry, literary fiction, biography, and books of Jewish interest (for Schocken). Among her authors are Heather Clark, Catherine Cohen, Mary Gaitskill, Julia Glass, David Grossman, Robin Coste Lewis, Sharon Olds, Joseph O’Neill, Clare Sestanovich, Joy Williams, and Kevin Young; she also works with the literary estates of Frank O’Hara, Oliver Sacks, and John Updike.
Naomi Gibbs
Executive Editor
Naomi Gibbs is an executive editor at Pantheon Books. Previously, she worked in the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt trade division. She acquires literary, upmarket, and genre-bending fiction, both American and international, as well as select memoirs, essays, and narrative nonfiction. Some of her recent and forthcoming titles include the National Book Award finalist Chain-Gang All-Stars and Friday Black by New York Times bestselling author Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, winner of the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree; Mina’s Matchbox by Yoko Ogawa, finalist for the National Book Award; How to Write an Autobiographical Novel by nationally bestselling author Alexander Chee, winner of the Publishing Triangle Award and a Lambda Literary honoree; Thin Skin by National Book Award finalist Jenn Shapland; No Time to Spare by Ursula K. Le Guin, winner of the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay; Land of Big Numbers by Te-Ping Chen, one of President Barack Obama’s favorite books of the year; and The Dream Hotel by National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize finalist Laila Lalami.
Concepción de León
Senior Editor
Concepción de León is a senior editor for nonfiction at Pantheon, where she acquires a range of titles, including investigative journalism, big-idea books, and social or cultural criticism, with particular interest in emerging Latine and underrepresented writers. Prior to joining Penguin Random House, she worked in journalism for nearly a decade, including five years as a writer and reporter for The New York Times, where she covered writers, books, and the publishing industry for the Books section. At the Times, she also launched El Espace, a column for news and culture targeted toward a Latine audience, and contributed across the paper, with bylines in Travel, Styles, Culture, Express, and more. Before landing at the Times, Concepción was an editor at Glamour magazine, working with the news and culture editors and spearheading a relaunch of the Work and Money section. She’s also held positions at New York magazine and Penguin Young Readers.
Anna Kaufman
Editor
Anna Kaufman worked as an independent bookseller and book buyer before joining Vintage/Anchor in 2017. She brings her frontline perspective of customers’ wants and needs to her work as an editor at Pantheon (up to and including figuring out what book someone is looking for when all they can tell you is “I think the cover’s blue”). She loves championing genre-bending literary fiction, such as GennaRose Nethercott’s Thistlefoot, Erin A. Craig’s A Land So Wide, Jane Pek’s The Verifiers, the bestselling Indigenous dark fiction anthology Never Whistle at Night, Claudia Gray’s Mr. Darcy & Miss Tilney mysteries, and Mattie Lubchansky’s bestselling graphic novel, Simplicity. She also adores heartfelt narrative nonfiction, such as Karen Fine’s New York Times bestselling The Other Family Doctor, Alice Wong’s Disability Visibility and Year of the Tiger, and Lauren Hough’s upcoming travel memoir, Monster of a Land. She remains, at her core, a big ol’ nerd and will happily trade D&D tips (currently playing: half-orc barbarian, 5th level).
Zach Phillips
Editor
Zach Phillips is an editor at Pantheon, where he specializes in narrative nonfiction, history, biography, and memoir, as well as some literary fiction and graphic nonfiction and novels. He is especially interested in progressive politics, forgotten histories, investigative reportage, and queer firebrands. Some of his recent and forthcoming titles are Nicked by National Book Award-winner M. T. Anderson; Health and Safety by Emily Witt, which won the Los Angeles Times Christopher Isherwood Prize; Trauma Plot by Jamie Hood; Ginseng Roots by Eisner and Ignatz Prize-winner Craig Thompson; Queen Mother by Whiting Award-winning historian Ashley D. Farmer; How Bright the Path Grows by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Marcia Chatelain, and Basic Pistol by Harel Shapira.
Chip Kidd
Editor-at-Large, Graphic Novels 
As editor-at-large for graphic novels at Pantheon since 2000, Chip Kidd has worked with some of the very best artists in the industry, including Chris Ware, Art Spiegelman, Daniel Clowes, Charles Burns, David Mazzucchelli, Sonny Liew, Michael Cho, Alex Ross, and Gengoroh Tagame, among many others. He is the recipient of the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award for Communications and the Lifetime Achievement Medal from the American Institute of Graphic Arts. He is the author of several graphic novels himself, including Batman: Death by Design for DC Comics and the upcoming Avengers: The Veracity Trap for Marvel.
David Treuer
Editor-at-Large
New York Times bestselling author David Treuer is Ojibwe from Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota. He is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, three Minnesota Book Awards, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Bush Foundation, and the Guggenheim Foundation; he has also been a Guggenheim Fellow and a Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. His most recent book, The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present, was a New York Times bestseller, a National Book Award finalist, a Minnesota Book Prize winner, a California Book Prize winner, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist, was named a “Best Book of the Century” by Kirkus Reviews, and was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal. He divides his time between his home on the Leech Lake Reservation and Los Angeles, where he is a professor of English at USC. Treuer joined Pantheon in 2021 as an editor-at-large and has acquired fiction, general nonfiction, and history. He is keenly interested in reading and acquiring literary fiction, smart genre fiction, nonfiction, narrative history, memoir, Indigenous voices, Asian American voices, and world literature.
Lisa Kwan
Assistant Editor
Lisa Kwan is an assistant editor at Pantheon Books. They have worked alongside authors such as Margo Jefferson, Samantha Irby, Mark Z. Danielewski, Keith O’Brien, Susanna Moore, and Gregory Pardlo, among others. Lisa is interested in literary, upmarket, and genre-bending fiction that is immersive and character-driven, and that speaks to a contemporary issue or idea, whether it be political, philosophical, or whimsical. On the nonfiction side, they are drawn to works of cultural criticism, literary memoir, investigative journalism, and narrative nonfiction, particularly those that explore gender, sexuality, social inequity, diaspora, or a particular subculture. Lisa graduated from the University of Oregon with a double major in anthropology and French. They live in Brooklyn, New York.
Shanna Milkey
Assistant Editor
Shanna Milkey is an assistant editor at Pantheon Books, where she supports Editor-in-Chief Denise Oswald and Editor-at-Large David Treuer. She is interested in literary and upmarket fiction, genre-bending and speculative stories, and epic multigenerational tales, as well as sharp cultural criticism and character-forward narrative nonfiction, history, and memoir. Prior to joining Pantheon, she worked at HarperCollins’ Amistad and Ecco imprints. In her time at Pantheon and elsewhere, she’s worked alongside authors such as Josiah Hesse, Mary Annette Pember, Damon Young, Stephanie Fairyington, MJ Corey, Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, Chloe Dalton, Attica Locke, Rachel L. Swarns, Dolen Perkins-Valdez, Lorna Goodison, Benjamin Busch, John Strausbaugh, and Bill Cheng.
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 Pantheon and Schocken, Zuleima has worked alongside authors such as Heather Clark, Chris Heath, Joseph O’Neill, Boo Trundle, Jonathan Wilson, Laura Warrell, Alexis Landau, 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 in the same vein. She lives in New York City and enjoys searching for good reading spots throughout the city.
Beatrice Chaudoin
Editorial Assistant
Beatrice Chaudoin is an editorial assistant at Pantheon, where she supports the desks of Zach Phillips and Concepción de León. Beatrice has worked alongside authors such as Paola Ramos, Jamie Hood, M.T. Anderson, Ben Passmore, Ashley D. Farmer, and Marcia Chatelain. She enjoys literary and historical fiction, narrative nonfiction with a radical point of view, and most forms of history. She holds a dual master’s degree in international and world history.
Tina Nouri-Mahdavi
Editorial Assistant
Tina Nouri-Mahdavi is an editorial assistant supporting the desks of Anna Kaufman and Chip Kidd. Her favorite reads are literary female- or queer-authored fiction, genre-bending novels, and works in translation. On the nonfiction side, she loves investigative journalism, literary memoirs, and essays. Tina is drawn to projects that amplify underrepresented voices, particularly those of immigrants and first-generation Americans. A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, she lives in Brooklyn, New York.