Kent Carroll is the publisher of Europa Editions. He is the former Editor-in-Chief of Grove Press, and the Co-founder, Publisher, and Editor-in-Chief of Carroll & Graf.
Early life
Kent Carroll was born in Binghamton, New York, to George Henry Carroll and Ruth Traver Carroll, and raised in North Tonawanda, New York. After graduating from Princeton in 1963, he spent time in West Africa and Europe before returning to the United States to earn an MA in History from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He moved to New York City in 1968, where he worked for a major movie studio and then as a reporter/critic for a newspaper before beginning his publishing career.
Grove Press
Carroll joined Grove Press in 1969 and from 1973-1980 served as Editorial Director working with publisher Barney Rosset. Grove had redefined the literary landscape of America by publishing such authors as Nobel Laureates Samuel Beckett, Kenzaburō Ōe, and Harold Pinter; Tom Stoppard, David Mamet; Henry Miller; and Marguerite Duras. He also wrote for Grove's magazine, Evergreen Review, as well as acquired American Graffiti, Gilbert Sorrentino's Mulligan's Stew, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Confederacy of Dunces, among others.
In 2004, Carroll and Italian publisher Sandro Ferri started Europa Editions, an American company that would publish European literature in translation as well as US and UK literary fiction and high-end crime fiction. In 2005 Europa published its first novel, Elena Ferrante's Days of Abandonment, which was favorably compared to Anna Karenina by The New York Times. Later releases have received great acclaim: Jane Gardam's Old Filth was short-listed for the Orange Prize and named a Notable Book of the Year by The New York Times; Steve Erickson's Zeroville was selected as a Best Book of the Year by Newsweek, Los Angeles Times, and National Public Radio; and Muriel Barbery's The Elegance of the Hedgehog was a New York Times Bestseller. In recent years, Europa has published several other notable novels under Carroll's leadership, including Damon Galgut's In a Strange Room ; Pure, Andrew Miller's historical novel that won both the Best Novel and the Book of the Year Costa Book Award in 2011; Kate Southwood's Falling to Earth ; and The Rage, Gene Kerrigan's novel that was awarded the Gold Dagger Best Crime Novel of the Year Award by the Crime Writers Association. In 2013, Europa was named Publisher of the Year by the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association.
Carroll has lectured at writers' conferences and spoken on television and radio as well as before university audiences about various aspects of the writing profession and the publishing business. He is also on the faculty of The Writers' Institute at The Graduate Center at The City University of New York.
Other projects
Carroll, along with Jodee Blanco, was the co-author of Ryan O'Neal's Both of Us: My Life with Farrah which was, briefly, on The New York Times best-seller list.
