MEET THE TEAM

Julie Grau

  • Julie began her career at Random House and then went on to become a founding editor and later, with Cindy Spiegel, Co-Publisher of Riverhead Books, a division of Penguin.

  • After twelve years, she and Cindy left to found the Spiegel & Grau imprint at Random House. Julie has worked with a wide range of writers, including Junot Díaz, Sandra Cisneros, Suze Orman, Piper Kerman, National Book Award finalist Barbara Demick, Nuala O’Faolain, Sarah Waters, Ann Beattie, Brené Brown, Dan Harris, and Chelsea Handler. She has also published a number of influential books by artists, including works by Kurt Cobain, Beastie Boys, Jay-Z, and Wu-Tang Clan. She has written for Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, among other publications, and has edited two catalogues for the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Celina Spiegel

  • Cindy was a founding editor of Riverhead Books and later became Co-Publisher of Riverhead with Julie Grau, with whom she went on to co-found Spiegel & Grau.

  • She has launched the literary careers of writers including James McBride, Khaled Hosseini, Bryan Stevenson, Chang-rae Lee, Gary Shteyngart, Alex Garland, Sana Krasikov, Philipp Meyer, Kathleen Norris, ZZ Packer, Domenica Ruta, Danzy Senna, and The Three Doctors (Sampson Davis, Rameck Hunt, and George Jenkins). She has also edited bestselling books by Yuval Noah Harari, Harold Bloom, Steven Rinella, Dan Pink, Sara Gruen, Yann Martel, and Anne Lamott, among many others. She sits on the board of Archangel Ancient Tree Archive and on the advisory board of Columbia Global Reports. She is co-editor of the anthology Out of the Garden: Women Writers on the Bible.

Liza Wachter

  • Liza co-founded RWSG, a premier book-to-film agency that specialized in the representation of dramatic rights.

  • Liza worked with a wide range of notable and award-winning authors, including Philip Pullman, Sam Lipsyte, Rachel Kushner, Ben Lerner, Matt Haig, Alissa Nutting, Sheila Heti, and Jon Ronson. RWSG clients included Colson Whitehead, Nic Pizzolatto, and Tom Perrotta, among others. RWSG worked with studios, producers, filmmakers, screenwriters, and actors to find the best homes for book adaptations and for authors interested in writing for film or TV. The agency was sold to WME in 2016. Prior to forming RWSG, Liza helped found Village Books, an independent bookstore in Pacific Palisades, California, and before that she worked as an attorney at Shearman & Sterling in New York. Currently, Liza serves on the board of The Paris Review and the Human Rights Watch California Committee.

Jacqueline Fischetti

  • Jacqueline brings more than fifteen years of experience working in the publishing industry in a range of roles spanning business development and marketing.

  • Jacqueline most recently served as Executive Director, Content Development, International, at Penguin Random House, leading its expansion into emerging markets. Prior to that, she founded and directed the Penguin Speakers Bureau within the Penguin Group, representing 150-plus authors including Pulitzer Prize winners and New York Times bestsellers.

Amy Metsch

  • Amy has been on the front lines of the revolutionary growth of the audiobook industry from a sideline format to one of the fastest-growing segments of the media business.

  • Amy worked at Penguin Random House Audio for seventeen years, most recently serving as the SVP, Associate Publisher and Editorial Director. Over the course of her tenure the list grew from 300 to 1400 titles annually while maintaining a reputation for bespoke quality and top-level author care. She is currently the Vice President of the Audio Publishers Association and regularly speaks and serves on panels about the audiobook business.

Nicole Dewey

  • Nicole Dewey is a veteran book publishing executive. She is the founder of Dewey Media Group and the former VP, Associate Publisher, and Director of Publicity for Little, Brown and Company.

  • She has worked with a wide range of writers, including Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai; Pulitzer Prize winners Ayad Akhtar, Jodi Kantor, and Anne Applebaum; National Book Award winner Tim Weiner and National Book Award finalists Ben Fountain, Atul Gawande, Adam Haslett, Sally Mann, Jane Mayer, and Kevin Powers; Booker Prize winners Hilary Mantel and Ian McEwan; Kate Atkinson, Amy Cuddy, Emma Donoghue, Malcolm Gladwell, Stephenie Meyer, Edna O’Brien, J. K. Rowling, and Maria Semple.

    She is the board chair for the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP) and serves on the board of Narrative Magazine.

Devon Halliday

  • Devon is a writer and editor with six years of experience in the publishing industry.

  • She has worked as a literary agent, an assistant scout, and a freelance editor. Her writing appears in the Pushcart Prize anthology, Ploughshares, and One Story, and she holds a fiction MFA from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers. Before coming to Spiegel & Grau, she worked as an agent at the Transatlantic Agency.

Joey McGarvey

  • Joey has fifteen years of editorial experience across Big Five, nonprofit, and independent publishing.

  • After beginning her career at Alfred A. Knopf and then Ballantine Bantam Dell, most recently Joey was at Milkweed Editions, where her list was partly focused on environmental and nature writing. There, she acquired books by Margaret Renkl, Elizabeth Rush, Diane Wilson, and Makenna Goodman, among others, and she additionally worked with authors including Ada Limón, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, and J. Drew Lanham. Books she has edited have been selected for the Read with Jenna/TODAY Show book club, Reese’s Book Club, and the Barnes & Noble Book of the Year, and include a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, a winner of a PEN Award, and a winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. She lives in Philadelphia.

Emily Burns

  • Emily Burns joined Spiegel and Grau as an editor in 2025. She previously spent more than seven years at Grove Atlantic, where her authors included Quan Barry, Bruna Dantas Lobato, and Martin Riker.

  • At Grove, she worked on books by award-winning and critically acclaimed authors including Douglas Stuart, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Bernardine Evaristo, Abraham Verghese, Sayaka Murata, Albert Woodfox, and Dava Sobel. She lives in Brooklyn.

Nora Tomas

  • Nora recently graduated from Columbia University with her MFA in nonfiction writing.

Lucia Gorman

  • Lucia is a graduate of Emerson College with a bachelor’s degree in publishing.

  • Before joining Spiegel & Grau she served as the Design Manager of Wilde Press at Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts. She has experience designing jackets, interiors, and eBooks. She spent many years working for her local library and bookselling at Barnes & Noble in Fairfield County, Connecticut.

Natalie Wilson

  • Natalie has over ten years of experience as an executive assistant across various industries. She is also a volunteer for The Sisterhood LA and Share A Meal.

Jess Bonet

  • Jess started her career in the Random House Publishing Group, working on marketing campaigns for renowned imprints including Ballantine, Del Rey, Random House, and Spiegel & Grau.

  • Over her eight-year career with the company she worked with an array of talented authors, including George Saunders, Sophie Kinsella, Curtis Sittenfeld, and Chelsea Handler. In 2020, she joined Book of the Month, where she managed an in-house event series and top-rated podcast, Virtual Book Tour. In addition to her time in publishing, she has created content campaigns for brands including LensCrafters, Oakley, and Target Optical, and others under the EssilorLuxottica umbrella.

Patsy Tucker

  • Most recently, Patsy served as Senior Vice President and Director of Insights and Analytics at Penguin Random House.

  • Patsy spent twenty-three years at PRH, joining in 2000 as a business analyst and climbing the ranks to business manager, director of business operations, and vice president and director of business intelligence. In her tenure, she spearheaded research related to acquisitions, content development, publication announcements, pricing, positioning, and marketing strategies for authors like Brené Brown, Prince Harry, Matthew McConaughey, Trevor Noah, Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, and Isabel Wilkerson.