Tina Pohlman will join Open Road on March 5 as publisher, filling the position vacated by Brendan Cahill last year, though the job itself has expanded with company’s recent hiring of multiple editorial specialists. She’ll report to ceo Jane Friedman and is charged with “lead[ing] Open Road’s editorial services, expansion into new verticals, and acquisition of new titles.” Friedman says the company has published over 2,000 titles since April 2010, and under Pohlman and the expanded editorial staff they will add “a minimum of 1,000” more titles by the end of 2012. Pohlman was formerly publisher of trade paperbacks at Crown. She will bring her depth of experience in working on backlist but will also drive acquisition of new content for Open Road as the company expands its long- and short-form originals and pursues more “outside-the-box or outside-the-book acquisition of content,” in the vein of their recent partnership with ProPublica.
Rachel Kahan will join William Morrow as executive editor, starting March 5. She has spent the past seven years at Putnam, most recently as senior editor.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has added another former Microsoft executive to their ranks, naming Mary Cullinane as their new svp of global corporate social responsibility. She is based in Boston, reporting directly to ceo (and former Microsoft executive) Linda Zecher. Cullinane “spearheaded Microsoft’s education-related innovation programs and initiatives worldwide.” In November Zecher said the company was “restructuring [their] corporate social responsibility efforts” and closed the Washington, DC office they had opened over the summer.
Tony Fisk will retire from his position as managing director of HarperCollins New Zealand in April to relocate to the UK. CEO of Harper ANZ Michael Moynahan says, “There are so very few occasions when a company is able to acknowledge such a significant and long standing contribution as that which Tony Fisk has made on behalf of HarperCollins. For many years, Tony Fisk and HarperCollins New Zealand have been synonymous and the way he has guided this business through an enormous amount of change is a tribute to his capacity as both a manager and a publisher.”
At Random House UK, Stephanie Sweeney has been promoted to publishing director at Windmill.
Bookmasters will distribute these UK publishers in North America: Arcturus Publishing, Heni Publishing and Salma Editions, House of Stratus, Stripe Publishing, Management Briefs, and Quintessentially Publishing.
Liz Gately Book Scouting has begun scouting for Munhakdongne in Korea.
Gal Beckerman has won the 2012 Sami Rohr Prize in Jewish Literature for When They Come for Us We’ll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). Beckerman also takes a $100,000 cash prize, with $25,000 awarded to runner-up Abigail Green for Moses Montefiore: Jewish Liberator, Imperial Hero (Belknap Press of Harvard University). Beckerman and Green will be honored at a gala awards ceremony in Jerusalem on April 11.