Chris Jackson

Ta-Nehisi Coates, Eddie Huang and Jay Z are in his stable as he talks Trevor Noah’s memoir and the fate of Prince’s.

- Andy Lewis

PUTTING TOGETHER A publishing slate is like planning “a dinner party that just’s for me,” says Chris Jackson. The recently named editor-in-chief and publisher of Random House imprint One World, and the most prominent African-American editor in publishing, casts a glance at an eclectic bookshelf in a sun-dappled conference room that includes such best-sellers he’s edited as Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me, Eddie Huang’s Fresh Off the Boat, Jill Leovy’s Ghettoside and Jay Z’s 2010 hit Decoded.

“It’s my perfect dinner party, and I like to think there are other people in the world who would like to be at the party, too,” says Jackson, 44. The Harlem-raised New Yorker — who attended Columbia, started out at textbook publisher John Wiley and spent the past decade at Spiegel and Grau — is sending out invitations to a party for One World, the once-venerated 25-year-old multicultural imprint that had strayed from its original mission to publish cutting-edge books about the black experience into such down-market fare as urban erotica and self-help guides. It now is poised for a relaunch under Jackson in fall 2017 (already lined up are former Attorney General Eric Holder’s memoir and two more books from Coates, including his first novel).

The hope is that Jackson will turn the small imprint (a staff of three; 12 books planned for 2017) into a tastemaking destination for writers of color. Just before Labor Day, Jackson, who lives in Brooklyn and shares custody of son Jasper with ex-wife Sarah McNally (owner of McNally Jackson Books), spoke with THR about a new Trayvon Martin book, whether we’ll ever see Prince’s memoir and how Hamilton and TV’s diversity influence him.