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Sean Manning, Vice President and Executive Editor

Sean Manning is interested in memoir, narrative nonfiction, contemporary history, literary and commercial fiction, cultural explorations, and anything else with a distinctive and exciting voice.

Titles he has edited include the #1 New York Times bestseller I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy; the #1 New York Times bestseller Howard Stern Comes Again by Howard Stern; the New York Times bestseller The Philosophy of Modern Song by Bob Dylan; the New York Times bestseller The Answer Is…: Reflections on My Life by Alex Trebek; the New York Times bestseller The Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee Book by Jerry Seinfeld; the New York Times bestseller I’m Your Huckleberry: A Memoir by Val Kilmer; Harold by Steven Wright; the New York Times bestseller Down the Drain by Julia Fox; the New York Times bestseller The Deepest South of All: True Stories from Natchez, Mississippi by Richard Grant; Freedom by Sebastian Junger; Reaganland: America’s Right Turn, 1976 – 1980 by Rick Perlstein (A New York Times Notable Book of 2020); Why Peacocks?: An Unlikely Search for Meaning in the World’s Most Magnificent Animal by Sean Flynn (2022 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence Longlist Selection); the New York Times bestseller Where Are the Children Now? by Mary Higgins Clark and Alafair Burke; This Will All Be Over Soon: A Memoir by Cecily Strong; the national bestseller KG A to Z: An Uncensored Encyclopedia of Life, Basketball and Everything In Between by Kevin Garnett; the New York Times bestseller A Private Cathedral by James Lee Burke; the national bestseller Stories to Tell: A Memoir by Richard Marx; No One Left to Come Looking for You by Sam Lipsyte; Bruce Lee: A Life by Matthew Polly; Dirty John and Other True Stories of Outlaws and Outsiders by Christopher Goffard; Best. Movie. Year. Ever.: How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen by Brian Raftery; Horse Crazy: The Story of a Woman and a World in Love with an Animal by Sarah Maslin Nir; and Changes: An Oral History of Tupac Shakur by Sheldon Pearce. He also oversees Simon & Schuster’s collection of Hunter S. Thompson titles, including the 50th anniversary edition of Fear and Loathing on Campaign Trail ’72 with a new introduction by Johnny Knoxville and an updated edition of Screwjack with a new introduction by Lars Ulrich.

Forthcoming titles include It’s Hard for Me to Live with Me: A Memoir by Rex Chapman with Seth Davis; Dumb Ideas: A Behind-the-Scenes Exposé on Making Pranks and Other Stupid Creative Endeavors (and How You Can Also Too!) by Eric Andre and Dan Curry; In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face to Face with the Idea of An Afterlife by Sebastian Junger; One Week to Change the World: An Oral History of the 1999 WTO Protests by DW Gibson; and A Good Bad Boy: Luke Perry and How a Generation Grew Up by Margaret Wappler.

Manning is the author of The Things That Need Doing, a family memoir that Buzz Bissinger described as “a beautiful portrait of hope and perseverance." He is also editor of five critically acclaimed anthologies, which feature original contributions from Ray Bradbury, Jennifer Egan, Susan Choi, Chuck Klosterman, Paul Muldoon, Francine Prose, Ishmael Reed, Julia Glass, Joyce Maynard, Jim Shepard, Matt Taibbi, and many others. He attracted national attention as the Executive Editor of Rhapsody, an in-flight magazine published by United Airlines, which The New York Times described as “the Paris Review of the air.” Among the authors he edited at Rhapsody are Karen Russell, Joyce Carol Oates, Amy Bloom, Anthony Doerr, Kristin Hannah, Roxane Gay, Emily St. John Mandel, Claire Vaye Watkins, Matthew Thomas, and Rick Moody. He received his MFA in fiction writing from The New School.