Frances Coady

Frances Coady is a veteran British publisher.^[1][2] She started Vintage paperbacks^[3][4][5] in the UK before moving to New York as the publisher of Picador,^[6] where she is now a literary agent at the Aragi agency.^[7]

Frances Coady
Born	London, England
Education	University of Sussex; University of Essex
Occupations	Publisher literary agent
Website	https://aragi.net/agents/frances-coady/

Early life

Born in London, Frances Coady has degrees from the University of Sussex and the University of Essex.^[8]

Career

Coady began her publishing career in 1982 in London at Faber & Faber,^[9][10] where she published Self-Help by Lorrie Moore,^[11] The Final Passage and The European Tribe by Caryl Phillips,^[12] and Edward Said's The World, the Text, and the Critic and After the Last Sky.^[9] In 1987, she became editorial director of Jonathan Cape^[13] and was featured in "The Powers That Will Be – We Choose the People Who Will Run Britain In the Nineties"^[14] in The Sunday Times Magazine. In 1989, she became the founding publisher of Vintage paperbacks^[15][3][16]"whose stunning success launched a thousand embarrassing moments in editorial conferences throughout Britain", according to The Independent.^[17] She continued to edit and publish authors including Edward Said (Culture and Imperialism);^[18] Salman Rushdie (The Moor's Last Sigh)^[19][20][21] and John Pilger^[22](A Secret Country).

In 1993, Coady became the publisher^[23] of the newly created literary division of Random House UK, and "one of the most powerful women in British publishing".^[17] She left Random House to relaunch Granta Books^[24] as a fully independent publishing house publishing in 1997.^[2][25]

In 2000, Coady moved to New York to become the publisher of Picador USA,^[26] an imprint of the Macmillan Group, which she turned into a paperback house with bestsellers and award-winning authors including Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay;^[27] Per Petterson's Out Stealing Horses,^[28] Edmund De Waal's The Hare with Amber Eyes^[29] and Edward St Aubyn's Patrick Melrose Novels.^[30]

She also published Frances Coady Books within Henry Holt and Farrar Straus & Giroux,^[31] including Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine;^[32][33] Richard Powers' Generosity^[34] and; Andrew Sean Greer's The Confessions of Max Tivoli.^[35] Vintage originals included The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg^[36] and Esi Edugyan's Half-Blood Blues.^[37] In September 2012, Coady joined Scott Rudin and Barry Diller of IAC to found a new publishing house, Brightline,^[38] which became Atavist Books.^[39] Atavist Books launched in 2014 with Karen Russell's Sleep Donation^[40]

As a literary agent at Aragi, Coady's authors include: Sharon Olds; Claudia Rankine; Ocean Vuong; Michael Cunningham, and Rebecca Solnit.^[41]

Awards and distinctions

Coady is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Personal life

Coady is married to the novelist Peter Carey.^[42]