FINALISTS
30 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ■ SEPTEMBER 9, 2019
Nick Thomas
Senior editor
Levine Querido, New York CityA
s usual, Mom knows best. During
the Harry Potter mania of the
1990s, the editor Arthur Levine
came to Nick Thomas’s hometown
of Glen Rock, N.J., where, as
Thomas recalls, “he led a parade or
something.” Segue to a couple of
decades later, when Thomas was a sophomore
in college looking for summer internships:
“My mom sent me a link to Scholastic/Arthur
A. Levine Books, where an internship oppor-
tunity was posted. She said, ‘Hey, this is the
guy that led the parade. You should totally do this.’ ” What
neither he nor his mom could have known was that this was
his career destiny. After spending two summers as an intern
with Levine, which he calls “such a dream,” he graduated
and went to work—initially part-time and then full-time—
for the imprint.
Right from the time he was an intern, Thomas presented
himself as “a young man with an extremely rare combination
of intelligence, taste, empathy, and drive,” Levine says. “He
was by far the most talented employee I’d ever had in my
35-year career.” Levine adds that the year that Thomas became
his editorial assistant was “the most productive I’ve ever had,
because I could rely so completely on his unwavering good
judgment and work ethic.” When Thomas left to sow his wild
oats at Bloomsbury, Levine was “crushed.” But his heart was
mended when, in 2017, Thomas rejoined Levine.
Thomas was the editor on several of last year’s acclaimed
books from Scholastic, including The Parker Inheritance by
Varian Johnson, which was bestowed a Coretta Scott King
Honor, and Front Desk by Kelly Yang, winner of the Asian
Pacific American Library Award. In March, when Levine left
Scholastic to launch his own press, Levine Querido, Thomas
(to no one’s surprise) went with him. The new press’s mission
is to focus on previously underrepresented authors and the
finest books in translation from around the world. While
“that’s something that Arthur Levine B ooks has always been
about,” Thomas says, “being a part of an independent com-
pany with a stated mission that fully infuses everything we do
is really powerful.” Citing what he calls the incredible team
he works with—marketing director Antonio Gonzalez Cerna,
assistant editor Meghan Maria McCullough, and publicity
manager Alexandra Hernandez—he says, “When you have a
team that is passionate about their mission, passionate aboutbooks, and really smart and
talented, you’re just better.
When you’re a scrappy
little independent pub-
lisher, there’s the joy and
the energy and the feeling
of responsibility, too. It’s
just a different vibe.”
Among the authors at
the new shop, whose first
list will launch in fall
2020, to whom Thomas
has become “indispens-
able,” according to Levine,
are A.S. King, who
“deserves a Newbery,” he
says; Eric Gansworth,
whom Thomas coaxed to
write a “brilliant” memoir
in verse, the first by a gay Native American; and Neal
Bascomb (The Grand Escape, The Nazi Hunters).
Gansworth’s upcoming book, Apple: Skin to the Core, which
Thomas calls “a memoir written in heartbreakingly beautiful
narrative poetry,” tells the story of the author’s Onondaga
family living among Tuscaroras, and of Native people in
America. “The title is a riff on a slur common in Native com-
munities, for someone “red on the outside, white on the
inside.” Gansworth is “kind of reclaiming that and sub-
verting it, among many, many other things,” Thomas says.
Lupe Wong Won’t Dance by Donna Barba Higuera is a con-
temporary middle grade debut about a girl who wants to be
the first female pitcher in the major leagues, and also to stop
the square dancing unit in seventh grade gym class. Thomas
calls it “hilarious and thoughtful.”
Besides the indie energy that the new company offers,
Thomas also likes the magic of the serendipitous moment
that sometimes occurs as with The Sea-Ringed: Sacred Stories
of the Americas. At the Bologna Book Fair, Levine took a
photo of some incredible art unattached to its book or author,
Thomas recalls, so Levine said, “Let’s find out what book this
is and who it’s from.” Thomas jumped on the case and found
that it was by María García Esperón and illustrated by
Amanda Mijangos, from a Mexican publisher. Not able to
read Spanish, Thomas then enlisted his friend the poet,
author, scholar, and translator David Boles to read it and let
him know what he thought of it. “I told him that if he
thought it was fantastic, I would hire him as the translator.”
It was indeed wonderful, and Thomas did hire Boles. “We
did it all in a matter of a few weeks, and we’re thrilled. I just
got the translation in, and it’s better than I ever could have
expected,” Thomas says. “It is an honor to be bringing this
book to a U.S. audience in both English and Spanish.”