Starscape / Tor Teen
Tor Teen and Starscape are imprints of the Tor Publishing Group dedicated to publishing a select list of exceptional speculative fiction for young readers and teens. We fully dedicate our resources to the limited titles we publish and aim, with each book, to awaken a lifelong passion for reading and a broader vision for what’s possible.
Tom Doherty, Chairman
(he/him/his)
For over forty years, Tor Books, Forge Books, Tor Teen, and Starscape have been dedicated to publishing the best in genre fiction for adult, teen, and middle-grade readers. In 1979, when I founded the company, our intent was to focus on fiction, often grounded in science past, present, and future, starting with prehistoric fiction—which would be science fiction based on anthropology—and stretching across history and the present into a future which is often extrapolated from possibilities suggested in physics and other scientific fields of today.
The resulting list not only includes books from a wide range of genres, but has managed to win recognition in all of these fields. A diverse list like ours comes from an editorial staff with diverse interests. I want editors to reach beyond those founding concepts. To have the freedom to do work that interests them with authors that they enjoy reading. Our editors bring passion to every project and are dedicated to finding and publishing the best books in every genre. It is a pleasure to introduce them to you.
Photo credit: Mark Billy
Devi Pillai, President and Publisher of Tor Publishing Group
(she/her/hers)
Devi Pillai is the President and Publisher of TPG (Tor, Tordotcom, Forge, Starscape, Tor Teen and Nightfire).
She has over twenty years of publishing experience at HarperCollins, Hachette, and Macmilian where she worked at a variety of science fiction, fantasy, and mainstream imprints. She was the founding editor at Orbit, where she worked for over a decade and which published The Witcher; James S. A. Corey’s Expanse series; the works of Brent Weeks, Gail Carriger, and Joe Abercrombie; and Hugo award-winning authors N. K. Jemisin and Ann Leckie.
Since joining Tor in 2016, she has overseen the publication of many award-winning and bestselling authors, including V. E. Schwab, Cixin Liu, and Mary Robinette Kowal. Her own authors currently include Brandon Sanderson, Christopher Paolini, Jenn Lyons, and Arkady Martine, whose debut novel A Memory Called Empire won the 2020 Hugo Award.
A fan at heart, she describes herself as having the bloody-minded reading tastes of a thirteen-year-old boy. She is always receptive to skillful pacing and deftly sketched characters, and of course assassins and dragons.
Photo: Zack Dezon
Ali Fisher, Executive Editor, Tor, Nightfire, Forge, Tor Teen, Starscape, Bramble
(she/her)
Since 2013, I’ve been HEA with Tor Publishing Group where I’m actively acquiring speculative fiction for adults, teens, and middle-grade readers, as well as humorous nonfiction for adults.
I’m a big fan of comedy in all genres so please send me the manuscripts that make you laugh and I love to see submissions from BIPOC and LGBTQIA2S+ writers.
FOR TOR, NIGHTFIRE, BRAMBLE, TOR TEEN, AND STARSCAPE: I’m interested in diverse and inclusive commercial speculative fiction with off-the-charts character chemistry, truly original world-building, and strong opinionated voices.
I’ve been a Tor fangirl since high school when I read Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel’s Dart and Juliet Marillier’s Daughter of the Forest. Iconic. These days my manuscript wish list includes new and original takes on folklore, possession, rivals-to-lovers, fake dating, witches, magic that requires tangible spellcraft, classic little guy aliens, and more. I’m into romance of all spice levels—from zero to four chili-pepper emojis—and I’m eager to see more gender and body diversity. Historical and dystopian settings generally don’t hit for me.
On the adult side, I acquired, edited, and debuted work from TJ Klune (The House in the Cerulean Sea, Under the Whispering Door, In the Lives of Puppets, and repackages of the previously published Green Creek Series), Everina Maxwell (Winter’s Orbit, Ocean’s Echo), and Ananda Lima (Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil). I manage Ursula K. Le Guin’s backlist with Tor and I’m working with Jennifer L. Armentrout on Fall of Ruin and Wrath, the first-ever book to be published under Bramble!
On the kids’ side, I’m currently working with Terry J. Benton-Walker (Blood Debts, The White Guy Dies First), P. Djèlí Clark (Abeni’s Song), Amanda Foody and C. L. Herman (All of Us Villains, A Fate So Cold), TJ Klune (The Extraordinaries Series), Kristen Simmons (Find Him Where You Left Him Dead), and more to be announced!
FOR FORGE: I’m interested in feel-good, humorous nonfiction. I love niche cultural explorations with vulnerability and heart.
I acquired and edited #1 New York Times bestseller Stay Sexy & Don’t Get Murdered by comedians Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark, co-hosts of My Favorite Murder, as well as A Bathroom Book for People Not Pooping or Peeing but Using the Bathroom as an Escape by comedian Joe Pera and illustrator Joe Bennett, I Will Not Die Alone by Dera White and illustrator Joe Bennett, and Raw Dog: The Naked Truth About Hot Dogs by comedian and podcaster Jamie Loftus.
I am not currently taking unagented or unsolicited manuscripts.
Miriam Weinberg, Senior Editor, Tor, Starscape/Tor Teen, Nightfire, Bramble
(she/her)
Having been in publishing since 2008, and at Tor for over a decade, I’ve been lucky to work with a wide-range of wonderful authors and phenomenal colleagues.
I’m currently acquiring adult and YA books, with a strong emphasis on the former. Many of the authors on my own list cross between markets, genres, and formats, like V.E. Schwab, Mark Oshiro, Sarah Gailey, Charlie Jane Anders, Alix Harrow, Madeline Ashby, and Alaya Dawn Johnson.
While I tend to immediately look for evocative world-building, distinctive style, and strong writing–I am always delighted to be entirely surprised by voices and narratives that don’t match anything that I’ve previously known.
I love to see anything that feels “too much”—maybe with twisty unreliable chaos like Knives Out, or the lush, goth-adjacent frenzies of Angela Carter. I’m also a long-time anime/manga nerd, raised on Ikuhara, CLAMP, and Cowboy Bebop–if your project would fit in on noitaminA (Psycho-pass, Tsuritama, Mononoke, Katanagatari), or at Bones studio (FMA:B, Darker than Black, Noragami, MHA, Star-Driver), it would likely fit on my list!
Give me your genre mash-ups, your high-brow-low-brow speculative-inflected narratives, and strongly rendered characters and relationships that evoke intense reactions and emotions from readers. I am always on board for a ghost story, witches, found families, genre mash-ups, and beloved tropes being subverted OR remarkably rendered—but again, I love being surprised by pitches I wouldn’t have even anticipated.
I’m particularly interested in making space for authors with a novel approach to storytelling, and in encouraging a more inclusive readership (and supporting authors) that better represents the plethora of human experiences and joys.
I am not currently taking unagented or unsolicited manuscripts.
