Liz Calder

Liz Calder (born 20 January 1938)^[1] is an English publisher and book editor.

Early life

Born in January 1938, Liz Calder spent her early years in London, and in 1949 she emigrated with her family to New Zealand. She graduated with a BA in English literature from Canterbury University in 1958 and returned to the UK. During the 1960s she lived in Canada and the USA and, for four years, in Sao Paulo, Brazil.^[2]

Career

Calder began her publishing career in 1971 at Victor Gollancz Ltd, where she published Salman Rushdie’s first novel Grimus, John Irving’s The World According to Garp and Angela Carter's The Passion of New Eve.^[2]

Joining Jonathan Cape in 1979, she published two Man Booker Prize winners, Salman Rushdie’s Midnight's Children and Anita Brookner's Hotel du Lac. She was also Julian Barnes' editor for his first four novels, including Flaubert's Parrot.^[3] In 1986 she became a founder director of Bloomsbury Publishing, where her list included Booker winners Margaret Atwood and Michael Ondaatje and Nobel literature laureate Nadine Gordimer. In 1997 she was named Editor of the Year at the British Book Awards. She was a founder of the Groucho Club and the Orange Prize for Fiction. In 2010 she was a judge on the Orange Prize. ^[2]

She was chair of the Royal Court Theatre (2000-2003), and since 2003 has been President of the Parati International Literary Festival (Festa Literária Internacional de Paraty, FLIP) in Brazil.^[2] She was awarded the Brazilian National Order of the Southern Cross and the Order of Cultural Merit in 2004.^[3] In 2012 she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by University Campus Suffolk. ^[4]

In 2009 she joined John and Genevieve Christie and Louis Baum to set up a Suffolk-based publishing house, Full Circle Editions. In October 2013, Full Circle produced FlipSide, a Brazilian literary and music festival, at Snape Maltings, Suffolk, home of Aldeburgh Music.^[4]

Private life

She has a daughter, Rachel, and a son, Toby, and four grandchildren, Jack, Milo and Matilda in Cambridge, and Arthur in Rio de Janeiro. Married to author and editor Louis Baum, she also has a stepson, Simon Baum, and two step-grandchildren, Leo and Poppy Valentine, in London.

References