Shona Abhyankar
Shona Abhyankar was a Waterstones bookseller for a couple of years before teaching English in Japan and then backpacking around Australia. She returned to the UK and became publicity assistant for Orion Publishing working across the Weidenfeld & Nicolson and Phoenix imprints. Profile Books lured her away and she had a happy time there before trying agency PR work, publicising titles for a range of publishers including Penguin and Transworld.
The next two years were spent as a literary agent in Sydney, Australia. Headline offered her a maternity cover role which was a welcome foot back in the door of London publishing and she is now relishing the opportunity of covering Publicity Director Nikki Barrow's maternity leave.