As Vice President, Publisher for James Patterson, I endeavor to be the book-publishing and -promoting right hand of the bestselling author in the world, and also of the soon-to-be (if we haven’t made them so already) bestselling authors we acquire for James’s JIMMY Patterson imprint. I have been with Little, Brown since 2004. I was new to publishing at the time—I had taken some side-trips into music journalism, teaching, maritime law, biochemistry, and political consulting—and am still grateful for being in and around books, and readers, every single day.

I arrived at Little, Brown almost twenty years ago from a career in the movie business, and I’ve never looked back. I’ve had the great privilege of editing some extraordinary books, all linked by one thing: a great voice. Some of the novels I’ve edited include the New York Times bestsellers Room by Emma Donoghue, Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple, The Girls by Lori Lansens, The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma, The Little Red Chairs by Edna O’Brien, and American Dervish by Ayad Akhtar. Non-fiction titles edited include the New York Times bestsellers I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai, Lunch in Paris by Elizabeth Bard, and Julie Powell’s Julie and Julia, as well as The Horse Boy by Rupert Isaacson and The Fear by Peter Godwin. My forthcoming titles include Matthew Weiner’s debut Heather, The Totality, Jamie Brenner’s The Forever Summer, I Love You Too Much by Alicia Drake, and Jody Shield’s new novel The Winter Station.

I joined Little, Brown in 2005 after working at Atria Books, Broadway Books, and HarperCollins. I oversee publishing across the Little, Brown Spark list, and as an editor, I acquire within the categories of health, psychology/self-help, science, parenting, and reference. My books usually have a prescriptive element but they might also be narrative. Among the authors I’ve had the pleasure of working with are Mark Hyman, David Perlmutter, Andrew Weil, Amy Cuddy, Walter Mischel, Nicholas Christakis, Scott Jurek, Joel Fuhrman, William Sears, Sue Johnson, John Ratey, Arianna Huffington, Roy Peter Clark, Donald and Lillian Stokes, and The Dalai Lama.

I am an executive editor, as well as the editorial director of Mulholland Books, where I’ve edited novels like The Cuckoo’s Calling, by Robert Galbraith (aka J.K. Rowling), JJ Abrams and Doug Dorst’s S., Lauren Beukes’s internationally bestselling The Shining Girls, as well national bestsellers like the debut Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, and crime fiction legends like Lawrence Block, Joe Lansdale, Charlie Huston, and Jim Thompson. At Little, Brown, I published the acclaimed literary novel Neverhome, as well as New York Times bestselling authors Michael Koryta and Dan Simmons. Prior to Little, Brown, I worked at Viking/Penguin and Picador, where I worked with authors and titles as diverse as Tana French, Stewart O’Nan, Ron Carlson, and Jasper Fforde. I have also edited a variety of nonfiction projects, such as The Boys In the Boat, Moby-Duck, and Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning.

I joined Little, Brown in 2001 and am proud to be part of this wonderful team. I acquire literary fiction, upmarket crime, and narrative nonfiction, including history, biography, and cultural history. I am particularly drawn to propulsive, page-turning stories, well told. Among the authors I’ve been lucky enough to work with are Naomi Alderman, Michael Connelly, Janet Fitch, Mary Gabriel, Nancy Goldstone, Ayelet Gundar-Goshen, Pete Hamill, Nathalia Holt, Richard Lange, Paul Lynch, Melina Marchetta, Stephenie Meyer, Daniel O’Malley, Sebastian Rotella, Alice Sebold, and David Sedaris.

I publish nonfiction books, with a focus on food and cooking, illustrated books, and narrative and expert-driven writing on science, tech, business, pop culture, current events, lifestyle, and humor. I've worked with Dominique Ansel, Michael Anthony, David Boaz, Peter Diamandis, Vivian Howard, Christopher Kimball, Sarah Knight, Jaron Lanier, John Lutz, Samin Nosrat and Wendy MacNaughton, Karen Page, Michael Ruhlman, Mark Schatzker, Daniel Smith, and Jonathan Waxman. Before I joined Little, Brown, I helped start the Regan Arts imprint of Phaidon, and before that was an editor at Simon & Schuster. My career in publishing started as a reader of poetry manuscripts, and I write occasionally about our business for Poets & Writers magazine. I pronounce my last name “Zur-ban.”

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I joined Little, Brown as an executive editor in December 2014 after five years as an executive editor at The Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House. Previously I worked as an editor at The Penguin Press, Henry Holt and Basic Books. I have edited and published three winners of the Pulitzer Prize, each of them debut authors: Samantha Power ("A Problem from Hell"), Caroline Elkins (Imperial Reckoning) and Liaquat Ahamed (Lords of Finance). At Little, Brown, I’m proud to have edited Wesley Lowery’s They Can’t Kill Us All, a New York Times bestseller and recipient of the Christopher Isherwood prize for autobiographical prose; #1 New York Times bestseller Kate Fagan’s What Made Maddy Run, longlisted for the PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing; finalist for the FT & McKinsey Business Book of the Year award Jonathan Taplin’s Move Fast and Break Things; and Jancee Dunn’s How Not to Hate Your Husband After Kids. Recent acquisitions include Josh Levin’s The Queen, Binyamin Appelbaum’s The Economist’s Hour, Bridgett Davis’s The World According to Fannie Davis, Marisa Meltzer’s This Is Big, and Mosi Secret’s book about a philanthropic experiment, begun in the 1960s, to integrate the elite private schools of the South.

I am a Senior Editor at Little, Brown and Company, where I edit Rick Bass, David Bezmozgis, Tony Earley, Adam Haslett, Leslie Jamison, Rick Moody, Edith Pearlman, and Lauren Slater, among other writers. Prior to joining Little, Brown, I was an editor at Viking Penguin and before that the co-founder and editorial director of Lookout Books, where I published Edith Pearlman’s Binocular Vision, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and finalist for the National Book Award. While at Lookout Books I was also the editor of the literary journal Ecotone, where I worked with Annie Proulx, Jonathan Lethem, Denis Johnson, Ann Beattie, Charles Baxter, Terry Tempest Williams, and John Jeremiah Sullivan, among many others.