Ruthie Petrie

Ruthie Petrie was elected as an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2021.

Ruthie Petrie began her publishing career in children’s books at William Collins and Penguin. She joined the Spare Rib collective (1978-82) and went on to Virago Press (1982-94), becoming an Editorial Director in 1987.  She spent many years as the Managing Editor at Serpent’s Tail; as Literature Officer at Canada House, she promoted Canadian writers in the UK; she set up the Publishing Programme of the Disability Rights Commission. Her work has included selecting and editing collections from the Guardian archive, The Guardian Book of the Countryside, Beside the Seaside, and Notes from the Garden, as well as Christopher Lloyd’s Cuttings;  editing two Readers from Index on Censorship; abridging for audio Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar and Letters Home. She was for several years on the board of Book Trust. She is Publishing Adviser to the Melanie Klein Trust.