Today all from the UK: At Harper UK, publishing director Lynne Drew has been promoted to publisher, fiction and will now oversee the company’s entire adult fiction program. Publishing director Julia Wisdom moves up to publisher, crime and thrillers, and deputy publishing director Sarah Ritherdon is in charge of commercial women’s fiction, with both reporting to Drew. Senior commissioning editor Emma Coode has been promoted to editorial director of science fiction imprint Voyager, reporting to publishing director Jane Johnson.
Former Harper UK Children’s publishing director Gillie Russell will join Aitken Alexander as an agent, focusing on YA and children’s books.
Orion Children’s has hired Amber Caraveo as editorial director. She has been senior editor at Random UK Children’s.
Picador UK senior editor Charlotte Greig is leaving the company after seven years to work freelance.
Author of Love Story Erich Segal, 72, died of a heart attack at his home in London on Sunday. (He had battled Parkinson’s Disease for 25 years.)
Washington Post obit
There are numerous testimonials to the life and work of Robert B. Parker available. A statement issued by his publisher Putnam notes that his family is arranging a private funeral, but plans a memorial in celebration of Parker’s life for mid-February in Boston.
Parker’s agent for 37 years Helen Brann comments, “Bob wrote five pages a day every day but Sunday (and some holidays or vacations with his wife Joan) every day of his adult life. He was very clear about it. No more and no less than five pages. Bob was ‘one of the ones’ in my life, a friend whose kindness, wit, loyalty and sense of honor, all of which were reflected in his work, I have counted on on a daily basis all these years. I shall miss him deeply.”
Parker’s longtime editor Christine Pepe adds, “What mattered most to Bob were his family and his writing, and those were the only things that he needed to be happy. He will be deeply missed by all us at Putnam, and by his fans everywhere.”