Judy Clain, Senior Vice President and Publisher, Summit Books

Judy Clain was born in Harare, Zimbabwe, and immigrated to New York City in 1979. She started her career in the rights department at Farrar, Straus and Giroux. She spent a decade in the movie business as an agent at Triad Artists, selling film rights of books, and then as a production executive at Sony/Mandalay Entertainment. She joined Little, Brown and Company in 1998 and was named Editor-in-Chief in 2011. In addition to managing the editorial team, some of the books Judy edited at Little, Brown include I Am Malala by Nobel Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai, Homeland Elegies by Pulitzer Prize–winning Ayad Akhtar, Room by Emma Donoghue, The Five-Star Weekend by Elin Hilderbrand, When a Crocodile Eats the Sun by Peter Godwin, Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple, Left on Tenth by Delia Ephron, and many more.

In January 2024, Judy joined Simon & Schuster as Senior Vice President and Publisher of the newly revived Summit Books imprint where she plans to build an internationally relevant list. Her forthcoming titles for Summit include books by the critically acclaimed authors Emma Donoghue, Ayad Akhtar, Peter Godwin, Daniel Kehlmann, Heather Rose, and Lauren Redniss, as well as memoirs by notable figures such as legendary actor Anthony Hopkins, former editor-in-chief of Bloomsbury Alexandra Pringle, McSweeney’s publisher Amanda Uhle, and Nobel Prize winner Nadia Murad. Judy has also acquired debut novels by filmmaker Mo Ogrodnik, Brooklyn based writer Katie Yee, and 21-year-old upcoming international literary star Nelio Biedermann.