Ben Platt

Background

About Ben Platt

I am an editor. Manuscripts and proposals I’ve edited are now published by Penguin Press, Riverhead Books, W. W. Norton & Company, Picador, Melville House, Basic Books, St. Martin’s Press, Bold Type Books, HarperCollins, Stanford University Press, Belknap Press, and Princeton University Press; they are forthcoming from University of Chicago Press, Stanford University Press, New York University Press, Columbia University Press, and Princeton University Press. Books I’ve edited have been praised by the New York Times, New Yorker, New York Times Book Review, Wall Street Journal, New Republic, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Guardian, Chicago Tribune, Ms. Magazine, Buzzfeed, Forbes, Marshall Project, Discover, Nature, Scientific American, Newsweek, Kirkus (starred), Publishers Weekly (starred), Library Journal (starred), and New York Review of Books. They have been selected as a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year and a New York Times Critics’ Top Book of the Year, as well as awarded the Bancroft Prize. I am currently editorial director at Public Books, where I founded the Public Thinker interview series, and direct the magazine’s book series at Columbia University Press. I have spoken about editing and publishing to undergraduate and graduate students at Columbia University, New York University, University of British Columbia, University of Connecticut, Object Lessons Institute, Humboldt University of Berlin, and Harvard University.