Alessandra Bastagli
Publisher
Alessandra Bastagli has worked in publishing for over two decades, both as a book editor and as an online features editor, at independent publishers including W.W. Norton & Co. and Nation Books (now Bold Type) as well as big five imprints Free Press and Dey Street. Some of the journalists she has worked with over the years include Vanessa Bee, Michelle Goldberg, Alia Malek, Dave Philipps, Sasha Polakow-Suransky, Nomi Prins, Jeremy Scahill, and Gary Younge. She has also published academics, activists and public commentators including Juan Cole, William Deresiewicz, Ibram X. Kendi, Darnell Moore, John Nichols, Rep. Ilhan Omar, Nomi Prins, and Mychal Denzel Smith. Most recently, as Editorial Director at Astra House, Alessandra published Italian-Cuban antifascist novelist Alba de Céspedes’ FORBIDDEN NOTEBOOK, abolitionist and lawyer Derecka Purnell’s BECOMING ABOLITIONISTS, prof. Kohei Saito’s international bestseller SLOW DOWN, and Economist book of the year Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah’s THE SEX LIVES OF AFRICAN WOMEN. She is also fluent in Italian and German and is the published translator, from German, of Jurek Becker, and from Italian, of Primo Levi.
NICK CIANI
Executive Editor
Nicholas Ciani joined One Signal Publishers in July 2019. Prior to joining One Signal he worked at The New Yorker, Macmillan, and at Vigliano Associates where he represented and helped develop projects in fiction and nonfiction.
His list includes Kim Kelly’s American labor movement history Fight Like Hell, a New Yorker Best Book of 2022; Kathleen McLaughlin’s Blood Money, which Kirkus called “a disturbing, painful story that smoothly combines the personal and the universal” (starred review); 2021 Golden Globe winner and Academy Award nominee Jena Friedman’s essay collection Not Funny; former spokesperson to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Iuliia Mendel’s The Fight of Our Lives, and social justice leader Tamika D. Mallory’s State of Emergency, a Kirkus Reviews 2021 Best Nonfiction Book of the Year.
Nick was a 2020 Publishers Weekly Star Watch nominee. As an agent, he sold novelist Max Gross’s 2020 National Jewish Book Award winner The Lost Shtetl. He has bylines at Forbes.com and The Harvard Crimson, where he was a Senior Editor and reporter.