Lennie Goodings is Chair of Virago Press. Her authors  include Margaret Atwood, Sarah Waters, Marilynne Robinson, Maya Angelou, Sarah Dunant, Sandi Toksvig, Linda Grant, Natasha Walter, Naomi Wolf, among many other writers. While still acquiring and editing for Virago, Lennie has written and published her own book, A Bite of the Apple: A Life with Books, Writers and Virago (February 2020). Part memoir, part history of Virago, it contains Lennie's stories and reflections on over forty years of feminist publishing. She is Canadian, married, the mother of two and lives in London.

 She was part of the second generation of Viragos – joining full time in 1979, four years after it published its first book: an amazingly exciting and dynamic time in the women’s movement.  She has gone through all of Virago’s rebirth and reincarnations: original independence; part of the Chatto,Virago,Cape Bodley Head Group; one of the team who did the management buy-out;  and part of the Board who sold the imprint to Little,Brown in 1995.  Lennie Goodings won Editor and Imprint of the Year at the British Book Awards in 2010 and this year was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by London’s Southbank’s Women of the World Festival.

Twitter: @Lennie_Virago

Zalon: Publishing and Editing: Books, Writers and Virago

Read: Inside the feminist publisher that upended the literary world by Melissa Benn in The New Statesmen

Words Away Salon: Being Edited and Being Published: What Every Writer Needs To Know

Words Away Workshop guest: The Craft of Revising