Maggie McKernan

‘One of the best editors of our times’

Maggie McKernan began her career at the famous Shakespeare & C0 bookshop in Paris. Her first publishing job was as a graduate trainee in the design and print department of  William Heinemann Ltd in London.  She went on to become senior editor at Secker & Warburg, then Editorial Director at Jonathan Cape. In 1991 she helped found the Orion Publishing Group, setting up their very successful literary publishing imprint. In 2006, she became a literary agent based in Edinburgh and London. In summer 2009 she launched her own literary consultancy in order to bring the highest level of literary services directly to writers.

She has worked with prize-winning writers in all genres and at all stages in their careers. These include: Janine Di Giovanni, Terence Stamp, Jostein Gaarder, Ben Okri, Jim Crace, Norman Lewis, Colum McCann, Michael Collins, Neil Belton, Charles Palliser, Alasdair Gray, Kunal Basu, Tom Leonard, Harriet Sergeant, David Davidar, Alan Spence, Diana Souhami, Andrew Greig, Harold Brodkey, Joanna Briscoe, Vikram Seth, James Ryan.

In addition she has published work on the writer Jane Austen and is at present at work on a biography of that writer for Bloomsbury. She works with Scottish Book Trust on its mentoring programme and is a frequent contributor to the MA Creative Writing programme at the University of Glasgow. She has talked and presented at many writer’s groups and literary festivals.

.

.