Karl French has worked for the past 20 years as an editor, writer and journalist for various publishing houses, among them Simon & Schuster, Foruli, Bloomsbury and Faber and Faber, and national publications, including the Guardian, Hotdog magazine and the Financial Times. He has also worked on books by Tim Jeal, Andrew Boulton, Miranda Seymour, Jonathan Fenby, John Kampfner, Lance Price, Peter Hook, Simon Wilde, Glenn Hughes among many others. He was for several years a reader at Bloomsbury Publishing where he read over one thousand manuscripts, and his recommendations for publication included the collected letters of Hunter S. Thompson, the reissued novels of Terry Southern and Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, Peter Biskind’s history of Hollywood in the 1970s which became a major best-seller. Karl has worked on several memoirs and biographies, most recently he worked as an editor of Bill Bruford’s autobiography, and also translated Markus Torgeby’s memoir, The Runner, published by Bloomsbury. He has also written and edited several books on the cinema and music – titles including Screen Violence, chosen by JG Ballard in the Sunday Times as his book of the year, This Is Spinal Tap – the Official Companion, Cult Movies, Art by Film Directors and Abba Unplugged – and works for TLC and on a freelance basis as a reader, editor, mentor and editorial consultant. He also works as a reader for Aitken Alexander Associates.
For TLC Karl reads literary and commercial fiction, and non-fiction (biography, autobiography, memoir, travel, political histories)
