Currently Alice Grundy is Associate Publisher at Brio Books, an independent Sydney-based publisher. She publishes YA and middle-reader books as well as literary fiction and non-fiction.
Eight years ago she co-founded Seizure, a launch-pad for Australian writing, and has developed the project from a print literary journal to online hub and book publisher. For four years she was Managing Editor at Giramondo, a university-based, award-winning publisher, where she worked on novels by Chinese authors Ye Xin and Sheng Keyi.
In 2014 she was awarded an Australia Council Editorial Professional Development Grant and travelled to China for a month to learn about the Chinese publishing industry. In 2015 she was invited to the Sino-Foreign Literature Conference in Beijing and presented a paper on the challenges and opportunities for Australian publishers to engage with their Chinese counterparts—especially in the case of literary fiction. Previously, she worked as an editor at Murdoch Books and assistant at Allen and Unwin.
She has written for And Other Stories, Sydney Review of Books and Overland and presented in Jaipur, Kolkata, Beijing and the east coast of Australia.
Founded in 2011, Brio Books (formerly Xoum Publishing) is an independent Australian trade publishing company based in Sydney. We publish approximately 20–25 fiction and non-fiction books a year under five imprints: Brio, a literary list; Xoum, a general fiction and non-fiction list for adults and children; Seizure, an incubator for new talent; Fantastica, our speculative fiction list; and XO Romance, our contemporary women’s fiction list. Brio’s specialty areas include literary fiction, crime fiction, romance and speculative fiction; and non-fiction with broad appeal (for example, true crime, mind, body & spirit, popular science, memoir and health & wellbeing). Middle-reader fiction and non-fiction with a focus on STEM and encouraging young people’s interest in science, with authors such as Dr Rob Bell and Cristy Burne, forms a key component of the program. Brio’s young adult fiction includes Marlee Jane Ward’s prize-winning trilogy and Sami Shah’s ground-breaking Fire Boy duology.
Since its inception, Brio’s focus has been publishing the best in local and international writing. The broad list of titles share the common denominators of being timely, beautifully designed and contributing to the cultural conversation in Australia and overseas.
While there is a strong emphasis on developing new talent such as with debut authors Elizabeth Tan and Vincent Silk, Brio has an equal passion for keeping important works in print. In 2017 we reissued backlist titles of beloved writers Robert Dessaix and Gail Bell, in stylish paperbacks.
Visit www.briobooks.com.au for more information.
