TJ Kelleher to Depart Basic Books
Basic Books VP and editorial director TJ Kelleher will depart after 16 years with the Hachette Book Group imprint, effective August 22.
In a note announcing Kelleher's departure to staff, Basic Books Group publisher Lara Heimert said that Kelleher had “decided to leave publishing and embrace a new life as a gentleman farmer.”
“Basic in its current incarnation is in large part TJ’s creation,” Heimert continued. “Without him, we would have no list in the hard sciences, much less an exemplary list in the hard sciences. We would not be the publisher of Richard Feynman and all of his extraordinarily profitable backlist. Most importantly, we would be far less smart as publishing operation.”
In his tenure at Basic, Kelleher published such authors as Eric Topol, Sherry Turkle, Edward Frenkel, Thor Hanson, Eugenia Cheng, and Leonard Susskind. He was also responsible for the publishing program surrounding The Feynman Lectures on Physics.
