Hannah Tinti won the 2008 John Sargent, Sr. First Novel Prize for THE GOOD THIEF The Good Thief, presented last night at the Mercantile Library Center for Fiction’s benefit dinner.
But the focus of this Bloomberg piece is on Farrar, Straus publisher Jonathan Galassi, honored with the Maxwell E. Perkins Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Field of Fiction. The Mercantile says, “Galassi was chosen in recognition of his career as both an editor and a publisher who has supported and shaped the work of a dazzling array of writers, carrying on the tradition exemplified so well by Maxwell Perkins.”
Author Jonathan Franzen told the modest crowd of over 100, “He will advance you money, but he will only give you so much.” Franzen was being light-hearted, but Galassi tells Bloomberg, “The money is getting out of hand. The business has been down since September, and we’ve felt that.” Looking to the future, “What worries me is the role of reading in people’s lives,” Galassi says. “We’re having a hard time figuring out our role as publishers. There’s a lot of competition for people’s time.”
Bloomberg