Sangeeta Mehta has worked in the book publishing field since the late 1990s. She has been an acquiring editor at both Little, Brown Books for Young Readers (the children's division of the Hachette Book Group) and Simon Pulse (the teen paperback division of Simon & Schuster). At Little, Brown, she worked with debut authors and some of the most prominent names in publishing. At Simon Pulse, she acquired and edited commercial fiction and non-fiction and ran two paperback series. She later returned to Little, Brown to freelance-edit an international bestseller.
Sangeeta currently consults with individual authors as well as corporate and independent book publishers, which include or have included Little A/Amazon Publishing, Roaring Brook/Macmillan, Tu Books/Lee & Low, and Algonquin Young Readers and Workman Publishing/Hachette Book Group. For six years, until 2022, she served on the Board of Governors of the Editorial Freelancers Association, where she launched and ran the organization’s first Diversity Initiative. She has also served on the board of The Word: A Storytelling Sanctuary and has led several workshops and critique groups for Inked Voices. Sangeeta has been writing for Jane Friedman’s blog since 2014 and has more recently begun to contributing to The Hot Sheet. She has been mentoring aspiring teen writers through the P/NW BOCES (Board of Cooperative Educational Services) since 2011.
Prior to working in New York publishing, Sangeeta was a projects manager/reader for West Coast literary agents Margret McBride and Charlotte Gusay, who focus on adult non-fiction and literary fiction, respectively. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of U.C. San Diego, Sangeeta studied briefly at Cambridge University and at the Sorbonne before earning a master’s degree in comparative literature from UCLA. She lives in Manhattan and Southern California.
Sangeeta has edited, co-edited, or consulted on books by the following authors, among others:
David Baldacci | Jim Ballard | Lauren Baratz-Logsted | Heather Beckel | John Bonk | Marc Brown | Marina Budhos | Evan Cooper | Hazel Dixon-Cooper | Kavita Daswani | Cameron Dokey | Tara Kai | Nancy Krulik | Gail Giles | Cathy Hapka | Karol Ann Hoeffner | Alice Hoffman | Nancy Holder | Ellen Hopkins | Sanoe Lake & Steve Jarrett | Whitney Lyles | Pooja Makhijani | Patrick McDonnell | The Metropolitan Museum of Art | Stephenie Meyer | Annabel Monaghan & Elisabeth Wolfe | Micol Ostow | James Patterson | Mitali Perkins | Suzanne Phillips | Harriet Schechter | Maria Shriver | Sheldon Siegel | Linda & Tosh Sivertsen | Bob Spitz | Todd Strasser | Suzanne Weyn | Allison van Diepen
Sangeeta regularly attends all major industry conventions and has spoken at several conferences and events, including:
2024: The Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) Conference (fall 2024)
2023: Editors Canada: International Editors Conference
2021: Editors Toronto branch meeting | Editors Canada: International Editors Conference
2018: SCBWI Annual Summer Conference
2017: Writer's Digest Conference | Pitch Publish Promote: A Conference for Writers
2016: SCBWI Metro New York
2015: Indo-American Arts Council Literary Festival
She has also spoken at Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Conference | Kriti Festival | SAJA Annual Conference | La Jolla Writers Conference and several colleges and universities
Some of Sangeeta’s media mentions and appearances:
2024: “For Editors, Going Freelance Can Offer Freedom, But Not Necessarily Stability” (Publishers Lunch, “the largest book publishing industry publication in the world”)
2023: “Navigating the Difference between Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction, with editor Sangeeta Mehta” (Writers With Wrinkles, “the go-to podcast for aspiring authors”)
2021: “#DesiLitBiz: Sangeeta Mehta on book editing and diversity and equity in publishing” (Desi Books, a global multimedia forum that showcases South Asian literature)
2021: “Episode 34 (May 25): Maisha Maurant and Sangeeta Mehta” (That Word Chat, an online chat show featuring people and things lexical)
2021: “Words Matter: Copyediting as a Process for or Against) Social Change” (Poets & Writers)
2020: “Diversity in Publishing: An Interview with Sangeeta Mehta” (The Editors’ Weekly, Official Blog of Canada’s national editorial association)
2015: “Promising Young Authors Hone Skills at BOCES Master Class” (Yorktown Daily Voice)
Sample titles Sangeeta has worked on
(Rows 1 & 2: middle grade and young adult. Rows 3 & 4: adult. Rows 4 & 5: nonfiction)
