The story
Myriad Editions was set up as a book packager in 1993 by Anne Benewick (1937–1998), who had been one of the founders of Pluto Press in the 1970s. Myriad's flagship atlas, The State of the World Atlas, was originally devised by Michael Kidron and Ronald Segal and is now authored by leading international peace researcher Dan Smith, OBE. It has sold more than 700,000 copies worldwide.
Myriad Editions continues to publish award-winning atlases that map political, social and environmental concerns. Most of the atlases are distributed internationally, through publishers including Penguin and the University of California Press in the US, Earthscan in the UK, Éditions Autrement in France, Eva in Germany, Obeikan in Saudi Arabia, Publifolha in Brazil, Maruzen in Japan, Sigma in Taiwan and Pajera in Thailand.
Myriad Editions also publishes special projects for the United Nations and other international organizations. These include a miniAtlas series on global development for the World Bank and a series of atlases on health issues for the World Health Organization and the American Cancer Society (with authors including Judith Mackay).
In 2005, Myriad Editions published The Brighton Book, a mixture of reportage, fiction, graphics and photographs; contributors included Jeanette Winterson and Nigella Lawson, alongside new writers. The imprint went on to publish full-length novels written by two of the anthology's contributors: Martine McDonagh's I Have Waited, and You Have Come and Lesley Thomson's A Kind of Vanishing.
In 2009, the independent publishing company was awarded an Arts Council England grant to further develop their fiction publishing. With this funding, Myriad was able to publish two début novels by local authors in 2009, The Cloths of Heaven by Sue Eckstein and Glasshopper by Isabel Ashdown.
In Spring 2010, Myriad Editions launched a fiction list with three new novels: The Noise of Strangers by Robert Dickinson, The Clay Dreaming by comic artist Ed Hillyer and The Spider Truces by Tom Connolly. The company went on to publish several more new novels, including Quilt, by Nicholas Royle, Invisibles by Ed Siegle, 4 a.m. by Nina de la Mer, Elizabeth Haynes's Into the Darkest Corner, winner of Amazon's Book of the Year in 2011 and Amazon's Rising Star Award for debut novels, and Sue Eckstein's second book, Interpreters.
The Myriad fiction list initially focused on first-time authors from the south-east of England but in 2013 the company increased and broadened its output, taking on titles from a more national and international perspective, as well as graphic novels. Among recent acquisitions are Belonging by Umi Sinha, Blackheath by Adam Baron, Noon in Paris, Eight in Chicago by Douglas Cowie, and North Facing by Tony Peake. Benjamin Johncock's novel The Pilot, published by Myriad in 2016, won the Best First Novel Award from the Authors' Club. Other well-received titles include Billy, Me & You by Nicola Streeten, the first long-form graphic memoir by a British woman to have been published, which was Highly Commended in the Popular Medicine category of the British Medical Association Medical Book Awards 2012, and The Inking Woman: 250 Years of Women Cartoon and Comics Artists in Britain. Myriad has gone on to publish a number of other notable books in the graphic medicine genre, including Ian Williams' The Bad Doctor (2014) and Una's Becoming Unbecoming (2015).
The Myriad non-fiction list includes books by such notable authors as Michael Norton OBE (365 Ways to Change the World, 2008), Lorna Goodison (Redemption Ground: Essays and Adventures, 2018) and Cynthia Enloe (The Big Push: Exposing and Challenging the Persistence of Patriarchy, 2018).
Read the full text
In March 2019, Myriad Editions published New Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Writing by Women of African Descent, edited by Margaret Busby (a follow-up to her 1992 Daughters of Africa), and in a collaboration with SOAS University of London launched an award linked to the anthology, the Margaret Busby New Daughters of Africa Award.
Merger with New Internationalist
In May 2017, a merger was announced between Myriad Editions and Oxford-based non-profit media co-operative New Internationalist (NI), whereby Myriad would continue to publish under its own imprint, with Candida Lacey and Corinne Pearlman remaining Publishing and Creative Directors respectively, while using the additional creative, sales and administrative resources of New Internationalist and having a presence in Oxford as well as in Brighton and London. Lacey said in a 2018 interview: "The merger has given us the ability to go global, beyond publishing UK-based debuts, and to build up a world literature list, allowing us to look for more diversity in writers and reach a wider readership that we didn't have before. NI has provided valuable editorial support in this area because of its track record in publishing political non-fiction and African fiction - where it has led the way, publishing the Caine Prize anthology every year."
Lacey stepped down as publisher of Myriad in September 2021.
From Wikipedia’s article on Myriad Editions, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3