Nan A. Talese


Nan Talese is an American editor, and a veteran of the New York publishing industry. Talese is the Senior Vice President of Doubleday. Since 1990, Talese has been the Publisher and Editorial Director of her own imprint, Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, known for publishing notable authors such as Pat Conroy, Ian McEwan, and Peter Ackroyd.

Early life

Nan Irene Ahearn Talese was born in 1933 to Thomas J. and Suzanne Ahearn of Rye, New York. Her father was a banker. Talese attended the Rye Country Day School and graduated from the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Greenwich, Connecticut. She was a debutante presented at the 1951 Westchester Cotillion. Talese graduated from Manhattanville College in 1955. Talese married Gay Talese in 1959 and at that time was already working for Random House.

Career

Talese began her career at Random House, first as a proofreader and later as the publisher's first female literary editor. She later worked at Simon & Schuster and Houghton Mifflin. Talese has edited many notable authors, including Pat Conroy, Margaret Atwood, Ian McEwan, Jennifer Egan, Antonia Fraser, Barry Unsworth, Valerie Martin, and Thomas Keneally. Talese's imprint also published James Frey's controversial memoir, A Million Little Pieces.
In 2005, Talese was the recipient of the very first Maxwell Perkins Award, given by the Center for Fiction. The award was established to "honor the work of an editor, publisher, or agent, who over the course of his or her career has discovered, nurtured, and championed writers of fiction in the United States. This award is dedicated to Maxwell Perkins, in celebration of his legacy as one of the country’s most important editors."
In 2006, she published a small edition of mostly blank pages under the title of Useless America by Jim Crace, whose book The Pesthouse was forthcoming from her imprint but which did not yet have a title. Useless America was inspired by a "phantom" book of Crace's which had been listed on Amazon in error. The title came from the line "This used to be America", which Crace had planned to use to begin Pesthouse. The scarce book now commands a high resale value.

Personal life

In 1959, Talese married writer Gay Talese. Her husband has been working on a book since 2007 that documents their relationship. They have two daughters: Pamela Talese, a painter, and Catherine Talese, a photographer and photo editor.