Random House Canada executive editor Anne Collins will be retiring in March 2026 after 27 years with Penguin Random House Canada.

Before entering the book publishing business in 1998, Collins worked for 20 years as a journalist at publications such as Chatelaine, Maclean’s, The Globe and Mail, Saturday Night, and Toronto Life. She wrote two books of nonfiction of her own – winning the 1988 Governor General’s Award for nonfiction for In the Sleep Room: The Story of the CIA Brainwashing Experiments in Canada – before joining Random House Canada as vice president and editorial director.

Collins held a number of roles at Random House Canada over the years – she became publisher there in 2000, and in 2010 was named publisher of the Knopf Random House Canada Publishing Group, a role she held for 11 years. She moved into the role of executive editor and vice president at Random House Canada in 2021.

Over the years Collins worked with international and Canadian authors that include Carol Shields, General Roméo Dallaire, Carol Off,  Diana Beresford-Kroeger, Linden MacIntyre, Eden Robinson, Sean Michaels, Ian Williams, and Julian Brave NoiseCat. Books she has edited have won the Gill Prize three times.

“Over the decades, countless authors have chosen Penguin Random House Canada as their publishing home specifically so they can work with Anne,” Penguin Random House Canada CEO Kristin Cochrane wrote in a release announcing Collins’s retirement. “She has helped to shape not only the literary landscape of this country, she has promoted literacy and the arts through her work serving on boards” – a selection of which include the Toronto Arts Council, PEN Canada, and the Laidlaw Foundation.

Collins was recognized in 2019 with the Ivy Award, the annual award organized by the International Visitors Programme and the Toronto International Festival of Authors given to an individual who has made a substantial contribution to Canadian publishing.

“Throughout her tenure, Anne has modeled creativity, generosity, and author care at the highest levels,” Cochrane wrote. “She has championed originality and excellence, supported generations of writers, and served as a wise, steady, and deeply respected mentor to her colleagues across the company, including me.”