The New Press publisher Ellen Adler will step down from her longtime role later this year. In a note sent to staff on April 4, Adler wrote that she will leave TNP at the end of September, which coincides with her 21st anniversary at the press. “It’s time for a change!” she wrote.
Adler first joined TNP as a board member in 2001, when she was heading up Berlitz Publishing’s trade business. In 2003, she was named deputy director of the nonprofit press, which focuses on publishing books for a progressive audience. Since joining TNP, Adler has been a leader in the independent publishing community, and the press was an early supporter of the Independent Publishers Caucus. In 2021, she was named PW Person of the Year in recognition of her work guiding TNP to a string of record years during the Covid crisis.
Among the books Adler has edited are Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right by Arlie Hochschild, which was a National Book Award Finalist in 2016; Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women by Susan Burton and Cari Lynn, the NAACP Image Award winner and Stephan Russo Goddard-Riverside Social Justice inaugural winner; and Who's Raising the Kids? Big Tech, Big Business, and the Lives of Children by Susan Linn, which received a starred PW review when it was released in 2022.
“The books and authors we’ve been privileged to publish, the challenges we’ve met—along with being a part of the vibrant independent publishing and bookselling worlds—have all made TNP a wonderful place to be,” Adler wrote to the TNP staff.
A successor for Adler will be named at a later date.
