Robert Weil (editor)

Robert Weil is an Executive Editor and Vice President of the publishing imprint W.W. Norton / Liveright. From 2011 to 2022 he was the Editor-in-Chief and Publishing Director of Liveright, succeeded by Peter J. Simon in July, 2022.

Early life and career
Weil graduated from Yale College with a B.A. in History in 1977, and originally considered teaching high school before beginning his publishing career with Times Books in 1978 as an Editorial Assistant. Two and a half years later he moved to the former Omni Magazine. With Omni Magazine he introduced a book division and packaged and agented science books to publishers before becoming Senior Editor at St. Martin's Press in 1988, a division of Macmillan Publishers. Weil's acquisitions included Michael Wallis's Route 66, Henry Roth's tetralogy of novels called The Mercy of a Rude Stream, Oliver Stone's autobiographical novel A Child's Night Dream, and John Bayley's Elegy for Iris.

W.W. Norton & Company / Liveright Publishing
In 1998, Weil moved to W.W. Norton & Company as an Executive Editor. His acquisition of most of the Patricia Highsmith backlist, which included several new volumes, in 1999, helped launch the Highsmith renaissance in the U.S. and the 2015 film Carol starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara, based on the novel The Price of Salt, as well as Highsmith's diaries, published in 2021. Weil also worked for several years with Paul McCartney (and Paul Muldoon ) on the editing of McCartney's book The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present, published in 2021.

In 2011, Weil was named the Editor-in-Chief and Publishing Director of Liveright Publishing Corporation. Per a 2021 profile in Publishers Weekly, "The relaunched imprint released its first books in 2012. It started with two full-time staffers and a list of about 20 books per year, and has grown to eight staffers and about 40 books annually." During Weil's tenure as Editor-in-Chief, Liveright received four Pulitzer Prizes (among nine finalists) as well as a National Book Award (among eight nominees). The current staff of Liveright includes Peter J. Simon, Peter Miller, Gina Iaquinta, Nick Curley, Haley Bracken, Clio Hamilton, Fanta Diallo, Maria Connors, Kadiatou Keita, and Luke Swann.

Additional work
Beyond editing, Weil frequently lectures on writing, publishing history, and the state of American culture and literature. He has spoken in Munich, Guadalajara, Miami, Chicago, and at Yale University, Vanderbilt University, and the University of Nebraska, among others. He has also written on books and publishing for various publications including The Washington Post and ArtForum.

Selected authors edited by Robert Weil
• Edward Abbey

• Danielle Allen

• Anthony Appiah

• Simon Armitage

• John Ashbery

• Isaac Babel

• J. G. Ballard

• William Barber II

• John Bayley

• Mary Beard

• Heinrich Böll

• Max Boot

• Patricia Bosworth

• T.C. Boyle

• Pete Buttigieg

• Jerome Charyn

• Erwin Chemerinsky

• J. M. Coetzee

• Linda Colley

• Francis Ford Coppola

• Robert Crumb

• Aline Kominsky-Crumb

• Jack E. Davis

• Patti Davis

• Freeman Dyson

• Joseph J. Ellis

• Will Eisner

• Jules Feiffer

• Lawrence Ferlinghetti

• Ruth Franklin

• Martin Gardner

• Henry Louis Gates Jr.

• Peter Gay

• William Giraldi

• Philip Glass

• Nadine Gordimer

• Annette Gordon-Reed

• Michael Gorra

• Allan Gurganus

• Yunte Huang

• Patricia Highsmith

• Jim Holt

• Clive James

• George F. Kennan

• Leslie S. Klinger

• Michael Korda

• Nicholas Lemann

• Jill Lepore

• Primo Levi

• David Levering Lewis

• Nelson Mandela

• Wilma Mankiller

• Russell Means

• Paul McCartney

• Larry McMurtry

• Alan Mikhail

• N. Scott Momaday

• Edmund Morgan (historian)

• Jan Morris

• Benjamin Moser

• Paul Muldoon

• Charles Ogletree

• Les Payne

• Tamara Payne

• Leonard Peltier

• James Poniewozik

• Henry Roth

• Joseph Roth

• Richard Rothstein

• Amartya Sen

• Roger Shattuck

• Peter Singer

• Edward Sorel

• David Small

• Gerry Spence

• Oliver Stone

• Maria Tatar

• Marilyn vos Savant

• Edward O. Wilson

• Frank B. Wilderson III