Liz Calder | |
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| Born | Elisabeth Nicole Baber (1938-01-20)20 January 1938 (age 87) London, England |
| Education | University of Canterbury (BA) |
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Elisabeth Nicole CalderCBE (néeBaber; born 20 January 1938) is an English publisher and book editor.
Calder was born Elisabeth Nicole Baber in London on 20 January 1938, the daughter of Florence Mary Baber (née Woodrow) and Ivor George Baber.[1][2][3] She spent her early years in London, and in 1949 she emigrated with her family to New Zealand. She graduated with a BA in English literature from theUniversity of Canterbury in 1958 and returned to the United Kingdom. During the 1960s she lived in Canada and the United States and, for four years, in São Paulo, Brazil.[3]
Calder began her publishing career in 1971 atVictor Gollancz Ltd, where she publishedSalman Rushdie’s first novelGrimus,John Irving’sThe World According to Garp andAngela Carter'sThe Passion of New Eve.[3]
JoiningJonathan Cape in 1979, she published twoMan Booker Prize winners, Salman Rushdie’sMidnight's Children andAnita Brookner'sHotel du Lac. She was alsoJulian Barnes' editor for his first four novels, includingFlaubert's Parrot.[4]In 1986 she became a founder director ofBloomsbury Publishing, where her list included Booker winnersMargaret Atwood andMichael Ondaatje and Nobel literature laureateNadine Gordimer. In 1997 she was named Editor of the Year at theBritish Book Awards. She was a founder of theGroucho Club and theOrange Prize for Fiction. In 2010 she was a judge on the Orange Prize.[3]
She was chair of theRoyal Court Theatre (2000–2003), and since 2003 has been President of the Parati International Literary Festival (Festa Literária Internacional de Paraty, FLIP) in Brazil.[3]She was awarded the Brazilian National Order of the Southern Cross and the Order of Cultural Merit in 2004.[4] In 2012, she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate byUniversity Campus Suffolk.[5]
In 2009 she joined John and Genevieve Christie and Louis Baum to set up a Suffolk-based publishing house, Full Circle Editions. In October 2013, Full Circle producedFlipSide, a Brazilian literary and music festival, atSnape Maltings, Suffolk, home ofAldeburgh Music.[5]
In the2018 Birthday Honours Calder was made aCommander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to literature.[6] She received the award from Prince Charles, Prince of Wales at Buckingham Palace in December 2018. In the same month she was confirmed as one of the judges for the 2019 Man Booker Prize.[7] Also in 2018, Calder was made an Honorary Fellow of theRoyal Society of Literature and received the RSLBenson Medal in recognition of her "meritorious works in poetry, fiction, history and belles lettres".[8] In 2019, Calder was conferred an honoraryDoctor of Letters degree by the University of Canterbury.[9]
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