George Gibson, former publishing director at Bloomsbury U.S., will join Grove Atlantic as executive editor beginning in January 2017.

Grove Atlantic publisher and CEO Morgan Entrekin described Gibson, “a longtime friend,” and said “everyone at Grove Atlantic is thrilled that George Gibson will be joining us. George is admired here and around the world as a brilliant, gracious, passionate publisher and editor.”

Entrekin also pointed to Gibson’s experience in independent publishing—Gibson was publisher at Walker & Co. and has also worked at David Godine—noting that it “makes him a perfect fit for us.”

Gibson was at Bloomsbury for 23 years but left following a companywide restructuring announced in September. He has edited and/or published a number of acclaimed works of nonfiction over the years, including Dava Sobel’s Longitude and Galileo’s Daughter, Mark Kurlansky’s Salt, and Carol Anderson’s White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide.

Gibson said that in the past he has “imagined having the chance to work at Grove Atlantic.” He said, “I have such longstanding admiration for Morgan and his colleagues, for the books they publish, and for the way they publish them. To have that chance now feels like enormous luck, and I can’t wait to get started.”