Our Team

Gareth Cook
Editor in Chief

Gareth, a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, has devoted his career to bringing important ideas into the public conversation. Before starting Verto, he was a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine and editor of “Mind Matters,” Scientific American’s psychology blog. Gareth got his start in journalism in Washington, D.C. with writing and editing jobs at Foreign Policy, U.S. News & World Report, and The Washington Monthly. He came to Boston to serve as news editor of The Boston Phoenix, the city’s late, great alternative weekly, and then moved to The Boston Globe, where he was an editor on the city desk before becoming the Globe’s science reporter. Gareth was one of the founders of the Globe’s Sunday Ideas section and served as its editor from 2007 to 2011. His writing has also appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times Book Review, NewYorker.com, Wired, and Scientific American. In 2005, Gareth was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for “explaining, with clarity and humanity, the complex scientific and ethical dimensions of stem cell research,” as well as the National Academies Communications Award. His work has twice been featured in Best American Science and Nature Writing, and he has appeared on NPR’s “Fresh Air,” “Science Friday,” “On Point,” and “Here and Now.” Gareth was also the series editor of The Best American Infographics. He lives in Boston.

Kate Rodemann
Director of Nonfiction

Over the past two decades, Kate has helped journalists, novelists, and scholars develop projects ranging from investigative deep-dives and personal essays to ambitious narratives and biographies. She began her editing career at Texas Monthly magazine, where a celebrated literary tradition and esteem for place made her fall in love with the power of story: to move individuals, change communities, and influence policy. She fed her passion for shaping wide-reaching stories at Highline, the digital longform site for HuffPost. Her projects—which have won numerous National Magazine Awards, been optioned for film and television, and received wide acclaim from critics and lawmakers—have covered wrongful convictions, con men, spiritual awakenings, musical legacies, medical discoveries, education and business initiatives, the beauty of barbecue, and everything in between. Kate has a heart for thoughtful, well-reported storytelling—and an avowed commitment to those who craft it. Raised in Madrid, she lives in Austin.

Chaz Curet
Director of Fiction

Chaz Curet is a writer and editor with more than a decade of experience in publishing. Over the course of his career, he has edited the works of award-winning and emerging writers alike, across a broad range of voices, styles, and genres. With a background in narrative and a special appreciation for stories that are difficult to categorize, he works closely with authors of both literary and commercial fiction to elevate their manuscripts in preparation for querying and publication. As a member of Verto’s nonfiction team, he has edited titles spanning from family memoir to business strategy, with an emphasis on developing ideas and sharpening them on the page.

Previously, as an editor and project manager at Plympton, Chaz oversaw the literary studio’s many innovative publishing ventures, including Recovering the Classics, a children’s series called Did You Know?, and a New York Public Library fiction and nonfiction collection. He has also served as an educational technology curriculum writer and editor, and as a fiction and poetry editor at various literary magazines. He earned his BA in English from Stanford University and his MFA in Fiction from Syracuse University, where he taught academic and creative writing.

Eli Mennerick
Assistant Editor

Eli Mennerick has been editing nonfiction books at Verto since 2021, first as an intern and then as an Assistant Editor. He has experience with a wide range of trade and academic titles spanning topics such as history, technology, business, psychology, and sociology. He particularly enjoys working with reporters to shape works of long-form narrative journalism and with academics to communicate their research to a general audience. Before joining the Verto team, he received a B.A. in English and a concentration in nonfiction writing from Yale University. There, as managing editor of The New Journal, he helped the publication win the Society of Professional Journalists Mark of Excellence Award for the best student magazine in the nation. Eli grew up in St. Louis and now lives in Chicago.

Lily Seltz
Editorial Assistant

Lily Seltz is a recent graduate of Brown University, where she earned a B.A. in Nonfiction Writing. She worked for The College Hill Independent, the joint alt-weekly newspaper for Brown and the Rhode Island School of Design, as a writer, Metro Editor, and Managing Editor. She also wrote for The Brown Daily Herald and post- magazine and helped develop peers’ work as part of the Writing Fellows program. Her honors thesis, about student organizing at Brown during the 2023-2024 academic year, won the English department prize in nonfiction. She was formerly an editorial intern at AGNI. A proud New Yorker, she is now a frequent contributor to the Upper West Side’s local outlet, The West Side Rag. 

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