We've appointed Katherine Halligan as our new Head of Non-Fiction and Activity - Nosy Crow Skip to content
Posted by Kate, January 5, 2016

We’ve appointed Katherine Halligan as our new Head of Non-Fiction and Activity

Yesterday we announced that we’ve appointed Katherine Halligan (pictured above) as Head of Non-fiction and Activity publishing for Nosy Crow. She starts on 11 January 2016.

She’ll be working on our partnership publishing lists with the National Trust (which launches this month) and with the British Museum (we’ll publish one book this year, but the “proper” launch is in 2017), as well as developing Nosy Crow non-fiction and activity books quite separate from our partnership publishing.

I’ve worked with Katherine twice before. I hired her when I ran Macmillan Children’s Books for a rights role, but quickly saw that she had extraordinary passion for making illustrated books and so moved her to an editorial role in the Campbell Books team. She quickly demonstrated that my willingness to take a punt on her was well-placed. I was then able to hire her again when I was looking for an Editorial Director for picture books at Scholastic. In between, she was Senior Commissioning Editor for Picture Books at Simon and Schuster.

We want to make non-fiction and activity books that are truly child-focussed – informative and fun and engaging as well as looking lovely. Katherine’s experience of crafting stories and, given her novelty experience, of using the page to its fullest extent to communicate with children and these skills, combined with a set of aesthetic sensibilities that are close to our own, make us confident that she’ll be a great addition to the team at this time of extraordinary growth and change in the field of children’s non-fiction and activity publishing.

She said in a quote in The Bookseller, “I am thrilled to be joining the brilliant team at Nosy Crow, and to take part in the really exciting and innovative work they are doing. It will be an honour to collaborate with such great institutions as the British Museum and the National Trust. And I am enormously excited about working with the very best authors and illustrators — both established and new — to create a range of books that are beautiful and funny and, above all, completely child-centred and irresistibly engaging.”

Louise Bolongaro, who’s chosen to return her focus exclusively to our growing and very successful picture book list, said, “I have had the most lovely time initiating and building our non-fiction list for the last eighteen months but, as we continue to grow and expand, it’s the perfect moment to make it a dedicated role. I’m thrilled to hand over the reins to Katherine and now look forward to immersing myself exclusively in picture books all over again.”

See more: