Literary Estates
Emma has worked closely with literary estates for over a decade, advising and offering support around the day-to-day management of the works of high-profile authors, as well as bigger-picture thinking and longer-term strategy across all parts of the business. With this in mind, Highbury Literary offers services specific to literary estates to honour an author's writing and legacy, and to give it the best possible chance to reach long-term readers as well as new audiences.
​
Writers
Highbury Literary offers a range of editorial services to help support writers at various stages of their journey to publication. From getting a manuscript into an agent's hands, through to understanding the publishing process once your manuscript has found a home, our aim is to give you the toolkit to help you stand out and be informed around the key stages from the moment you write those first words.
​
About Highbury Literary
Highbury Literary was founded by Emma Cheshire to empower and support literary estates and writers at key moments in their publishing journey. Emma has over ten years of experience in the industry and currently works as a consultant working with literary estates, writers, literary agencies and The Society of Authors. She is also a reader for a literary scout, a role which involves looking for stand-out titles for international publishers.
​
As Deputy Director of the Rights Team at Faber & Faber, she worked closely and led strategy with authors and agents on globally bestselling and prize-winning frontlist and backlist titles titles such as This Mournable Body by Tsitsi Dangarembga, The Secret Life of Cows by Rosamund Young, On Connection by Kae Tempest, Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter and Apple Tree Yard by Louise Doughty on the adult's side; and Letters from the Lighthouse by Emma Carroll, Voyage of the Sparrowhawk by Natasha Farrant and The Hug by Eoin McLaughlin and Polly Dunbar on the children's list. She also worked directly with a number of prestigious and Nobel Prize-winning literary estates across all areas of the business, supporting and advising estates of authors such as T.S. Eliot, Seamus Heaney, William Golding, Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Philip Larkin and Stevie Smith.
​
Emma has worked consistently across literary and commercial fiction, non-fiction and children’s titles and is an expert in all subsidiary rights, as well as international markets. In 2016 she was named a Bookseller Rising Star - a list of forward-thinking individuals in the trade singled out as possible leaders of the future - for her work around subsidiary rights management with a particular focus on the copyright of literary estates.
​
Emma read English at Newnham College Cambridge and completed a Master’s Degree in Publishing at UCL and she is passionate about reading, writing and photography. She is based in Highbury and can often be found at Sawyer & Gray and La Maison Highbury, as well as her local bookshops BookBar, Ink@84, New Beacon Books and House of Hodge.
