Gayatri Patnaik

Director, Beacon Press

Beacon Press

Email: gpatnaik@beacon.org

Telephone: (617) 948-6566

Gayatri Patnaik is Director of Beacon Press. Patnaik received her B.A. in Literature from Goshen College, her M.A. in Anthropology from The New School for Social Research in New York City and, after a Random House internship, began her publishing career at Rob Weisbach Books, an imprint of William Morrow. She then moved to Routledge, where she was promoted to editor, and subsequently worked as a senior editor at Palgrave-Macmillan. Patnaik joined Beacon Press in 2002 and has worked with authors including Imani Perry, Kate Bornstein, Marcus Rediker, and Cornel West. Patnaik's notable acquisitions include: The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks by Jeanne Theoharis, winner of the NAACP Image Award (2014); Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, an American Book Award recipient (2015); and Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry by Imani Perry, winner of the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld award for Biography (2019); winner of the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Nonfiction (2019); and winner of the Publishing Triangle's Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction (2018). Patnaik received the 2020 Editorial Excellence Award from Biographers International Organization.