Sara-Jade Virtue, Brand Development Director, Fiction, at Simon & Schuster UK, has won the Publisher and/or Editor of the Year award for the Romantic Novelists’ Association’s (RNA) annual Industry Awards for 2022. The awards celebrate the hard work and talent of any person, group or organisation who has championed the broad genre of romantic fiction in a positive way.

Sara-Jade joined the business in 2007 and spent twelve years as Special Sales Director in the Sales team before moving to Editorial in November 2019. She is the Brand Director for the Simon & Schuster (S&S) women’s fiction community Books and the City, which launched on Valentine’s Day 2011, and works across the commercial women’s fiction list, identifying new talent and developing growth strategies for authors. She also manages the #DigitalOriginals publishing programme and #OneDay open submission project, leads the Jackie Collins reissue programme, runs the #LibraryLink project, and leads a #RespectRomFic movement, aiming to increase the profile of romantic novelists in the UK.