COO and Publisher

Ben Schrank

(he/him/his)

Ben Schrank is publisher of Astra House and COO of Astra Publishing House. Ben was previously president and publisher at Henry Holt & Company and prior to that, president and publisher of Razorbill, an imprint of Penguin Random House. At Astra, Ben has acquired fiction and nonfiction, including, most recently, THE BATHYSPHERE BOOK by Brad Fox, SEEING by Chai Jing, and FIRE IN THE CANYON by Daniel Gumbiner, as well as other works by Yuri Felsen, Royal Society of Literature Encore award winner Daisy Hildyard, August Prizewinner Lydia Sandgren and 20th Century renowned Chinese novelist and essayist Wang Xiaobo. Upcoming books include THIEVING SUN by Monica Datta and MRS. LILIENBLUM’S CLOUD FACTORY by Iddo Gefen.

You can reach him at bschrank@astrapublishinghouse.com

Marketing Manager

Tiffany Gonzalez

(she/her/hers)

Tiffany Gonzalez previously worked in Production at HarperCollins Publishers. She has worked on the Publicity and Marketing campaign for Dreaming of You by Melissa Lozada-Oliva and on the Marketing campaigns for Becoming Abolitionists by Derecka Purnell, The Sex Lives of African Women by Nana Darkoa Sekiyamah and The Town of Babylon, by Alejandro Varela. She has earned her Bachelors and Master’s degrees from Rutgers University – NB. She’s fluent in Spanish and is excited to bring unique and creative initiatives to fruition.

Assistant Editor

Rola Harb

(she/her/hers)

Rola Harb joined Astra House in 2021 after interning at the Arab Center Washington DC, PRH, MMQ Literary Agency, W.W. Norton, and The New Press. With a focus on traditionally underrepresented voices and stories, she is drawn to literary and narrative based nonfiction and essays and literary fiction with powerful and evocative prose, uncanny genre-bending ideas, and progressive thought. She is also interested in French and Arabic literature and translation. Her authors include Erika Kobayashi, José Falero, Puloma Ghosh, and Céline Semaan.

You can reach her at rharb@astrapublishinghouse.com. 

Publicity Director

Rachael Small

(she/her/hers)

Rachael Small is a literary translator and publicist. She previously directed publicity for Europa Editions, where she led campaigns for Elena Ferrante’s bestselling novels, The Lying Life of Adults and The Story of the Lost Child (translated by Ann Goldstein), Mieko Kawakami’s breakout novel Breasts and Eggs (translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd), and many more. She has also edited translations of novels by Négar Djavadi, Canék Sanchez Guevara, Aura Xilonen, Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, and Christelle Dabos. Her translation of Abdellah Taïa’s short story collection, Another Morocco (Semiotext(e)) was named one of World Literature Today‘s “75 Notable Translations of 2017.”

Editor

Deborah Ghim

(she/her/hers)

Deborah Ghim has worked as a literary scout and in editorial at Farrar, Straus and Giroux, where she edited Christina Sharpe, Virginie Despentes, Pankaj Mishra, Philip Dray, and Antonio Muñoz Molina, among many others. At Astra House, she has acquired and edited DOGS OF SUMMER by Andrea Abreu and Y/N by Esther Yi, which was longlisted for the 2023 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Deborah’s other authors include National Magazine Award for Fiction winner Michael Deagler; Scotiabank Giller Prize winner Sean Michaels; Fátima Vélez, Celina Baljeet Basra, and Theodore McCombs. Deborah is looking to acquire craft-driven literary fiction with a provocative POV and strong evocation of place or (sub)culture. She is also drawn to intellectually rigorous, paradigm-shifting nonfiction in a literary register. She is fluent in Korean. You can reach her at dghim@astrapublishinghouse.com.

Publicist

Alexis Nowicki

(she/her/hers)

Alexis Nowicki previously worked in the publicity department at Farrar, Straus and Giroux, where she led campaigns for books including Alec MacGillis’s Fulfillment, Jonathan Slaght’s Owls of the Eastern Ice, Jacqueline Rose’s On Violence and On Violence Against Women, Tamara Shopsin’s LaserWriter II, and francine j. harris’s Here is the Sweet Hand. Originally from Michigan — where she worked at 826michigan, InsideOut Literary Arts Project, and the Michigan Theater — she now resides in Brooklyn.

Junior Designer

Frankie DiGiovanni

(she/her/hers)

Junior Designer