The Bookseller – News – Ursula Doyle leaves Fleet after eight years; crowdfunds to sue past employer

Ursula Doyle has left her role as publisher at Little, Brown imprint Fleet claiming she was “hounded out”.

Doyle has worked at Hachette since 2008, first at feminist press Virago, before launching the literary imprint Fleet eight years ago, where she published authors such as Colson Whitehead and Ronan Farrow.

Doyle has since launched a crowdfund to sue her past employer claiming it failed to protect her after she published Kathleen Stock’s Material Girls, and subsequently damaged her reputation by moving paperback editions of two authors’ books away from the Fleet imprint, after both writers complained that her views were transphobic. “I am bringing a claim of discrimination on the grounds of my gender-critical belief (sometimes known as ‘sex realism’), and of sex discrimination.” The fund has passed its initial target of £30,000, and she will now be represented by Richard Linskell of Gunnercooke LLP and Naomi Cunningham of Outer Temple Chambers. According to Doyle, a procedural hearing will take place in August.

Before she launched the crowdfund, Doyle told The Bookseller: “I don’t have anything to add to my leaving Little, Brown to what I posted on X earlier this week.” A spokesperson for Little, Brown told The Bookseller that it would not be commenting on her departure. 

Doyle spearheaded the launch of Fleet back in May 2016. Over the course of her career, Doyle has published a wide range of successful novels, including Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones (Picador), Paula McLain’s The Paris Wife (Virago) and Claire Messud’s The Woman Upstairs (Virago). She has also published bestselling non-fiction, among which are Jon Ronson’s first book, Them: Adventures with Extremists (Picador) and Dave Eggers’s memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (Picador).

Before launching Fleet, she left Pan Macmillan as deputy editor for Picador in 2008 to join Virago, where she was promoted to associate publisher in 2011.