Kate Travers will join Workman as director, digital business development starting April 11th, reporting to Andrea Fleck-Nisbet. In this role she will oversee our web properties and services, develop and maintain Workman’s online communities, and help to plan Workman’s overall digital media strategy. She was most recently at F+W Media, where she was responsible for executing digital strategy across 23 e-commerce and 18 community websites.
Brianne Halverson will join the It Books and Harper Design marketing department as associate director of marketing beginning April 9. She was most recently director of publicity for William Morrow.
Elizabeth Hanslik Psaltis has been promoted to marketing director for Perigee Books/HPBooks/PHP. She retains her role as advertising and promotion director for Berkley, NAL, Riverhead Trade Paperbacks and The Penguin Press.
Gabrielle Gantz will join Picador as senior publicist on April 9. She was most recently a publicist at Viking/Penguin.
Michael Connelly was made a Knight of Arts and Letters (Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres) by France’s Ministry of Culture and Communications.
Author Harry Crews, 76, who taught for many years at the University of Florida, Gainseville, died from complications of neuropathy on Wednesday. The NYT says his “novels out-Gothic Southern Gothic by conjuring a world of hard-drinking, punch-throwing, snake-oil-selling characters whose physical, mental, social and sexual deviations render them somehow entirely normal and eminently sympathetic.”
The International Prize for Arabic Fiction went to Lebanese author Rabee Jaber for THE DRUZE OF BELGRADE.