Jenna Bush Hager is booked (and busy).
The Today media maven spends every weekday hosting the fourth hour of the NBC morning show — newly named Jenna & Friends — and she also pops into the earlier hours to deliver the “Morning Boost.” (Bush Hager received the “Boost” baton from Hoda Kotb on the anchor’s last day at Today in an effort to keep Kotb’s longstanding tradition of good vibes going.)
Now, Bush Hager is even busier. The host, whose popular book club Read with Jenna has helped propel 47 titles to the New York Times best seller list, is launching her own publishing imprint.
Nathan Congleton/NBC
Bush Hager tells PEOPLE that she began tossing around the idea for the imprint, Thousand Voices Books, six months ago — “and here we are!”
“Because I’m so into it, it doesn’t really feel like work,” she says. “I mean, it is, but I’m just having such a great time.”
Thousand Voices Books will be part of the Random House Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, and will serve as an expansion of Bush Hager’s media company Thousand Voices. The imprint will publish six titles in 2025, the first of which is called Conform by Ariel Sullivan.
“Somebody had told me, ‘You don’t need to start an imprint. These are the reasons why it doesn’t work.’ And the truth is, all of the reasons why traditional, for lack of a better word, celebrity or influencer-led imprints don’t work, we have sort of a solve for,” Bush Hager says, citing the fact that she’s established herself as a trusted voice in the literary world already, and she has a built-in platform to help champion her choices.
Jenna Bush Hager/Instagram
She’s also been a book worm from the beginning and can trace her love of literature back through her family tree.
“Both of my grandmothers, whom [sister Barbara and I] were named after, there was a certain importance that they had in our lives, and they were huge readers. I mean, my grandmother, Barbara Bush, had a sewn, needle-pointed pillow on her couch that said, ‘Reading is sexy.’ Which I’ve remade and put on my couch,” she says with a laugh.
Jemal Countess/Getty
Bush Hager’s mom, former first lady Laura Bush, was a librarian, and so were both grandmothers: Laura’s mother, Jenna Welch, and the former first lady. When Barbara’s husband George H. W. Bush became Vice President in 1981, she focused her special cause on literacy. She later started the nonprofit the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy, which advocates for helping parents and their children learn the basic educational skills of reading and writing.
“I remember, probably right when I could read myself, I was in maybe second or third grade, and my grandmother Barbara was visiting, and she was the first lady [then], and she’d actually brought us her dog’s puppy. Her grandpuppy. And I was reading a book that she had recommended on her arrival called A Dog Called Kitty. And it’s kind of in the same vein as Where the Red Fern Grows. It’s this really sad, sweet story of a dog named Kitty who has a friend, spoiler alert, and the dog passes away at the end,” Bush Hager recalls.
“I was bawling crying, being driven around with her, and she was like, ‘Somebody’s going to think I’m hitting you! Don’t cry so hard!’ But I think I realized, well, [this experience] was with her, and I couldn’t put the book down. And I think I realized the power that books have to make us feel,” she says.
NBC
As Bush Hager begins her new imprint, she’s also embarking on a new era of Jenna & Friends. After Kotb’s departure on Jan. 10, the show is having a rotation of A-list stars step in as host.
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This week, Taraji P. Henson and Eva Longoria were on-hand and Bush Hager couldn’t have been more appreciative for their help amid the devastating fires in Los Angeles.
“I honestly am so grateful that Taraji and Eva came,” she says. “I mean, they are going through [this]— they live in L.A. and their hearts are broken — and yet they showed up for me.”
One thing Bush Hager does during trouble times, is read.
“When we’re witnessing these horrific fires and people’s livelihoods and lives and everything that they own being burned and it’s this horrific moment in our history, this book I read — that I can’t tell you about yet — brought so much hope to me.”
“So I just think [books] do have this singular power, she concluded, “that is something I want to be part of.”
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