Jon Thurber, who has been books editor at the Los Angeles Times since 2010, his latest posting in over 40 years at the newspaper, is leaving “at the beginning of the summer.” The announcement does not name a replacement for position.
Kathy Davis has joined Harlequin as acquisitions editor, supporting the newly acquired Heartsong Presents program.
Peter Collingridge is the latest well-known epublishing recruit for Safari Books Online, where he will serve as vp of product development. He will work out of London initially, but will relocate to the San Francisco Bay area this summer.
Laura Dawson will join Bowker on May 16, doing product management for the DOI, ISNI and ISTC standards. She has been at Firebrand.
At advertising agency MK Creative-Media-Marketing Kaitlin Harri is now account director.
Publishers Group West will begin providing digital distribution services through Constellation for Interlink Publishing and Salon Media Group.
Informed German publishing sources report an announcement is expected shortly that former Random House executive Joerg Pfuhl will join the supervisory board of German entertainment conglomerate Edel. (It’s anticipated that the announcement will follow today’s annual meeting.) Edel is “one of the top independent music companies in Europe,” and since 2007 has been “pursuing a strategy aimed at making book publishing a key mainstay of its business” by building a publishing group that incorporates Pabel-Moewig Verlag and Rockbuch Verlag along with their own Edel Edition and earBooks, which combines picture books and music cds.
Pfuhl served in a number of executive positions at Random House, Inc., most recently as CEO of Random House Germany and a member of the Random House executive board. In announcing his resignation last year, RH ceo Markus Dohle said Pfuhl “wanted to devote more time to his family and to his interests in education, consulting, and philanthropic work and give them the same undivided focus he has given the company.” He has been head of the Reading Foundation, which participated in Germany’s World Book Night celebration.
The Center for Fiction has selected their second class of fellows, supporting emerging writers in the NYC-area. They are: Leopoldine Core, Rosalie Knecht, Lisa Lee, Daniel Long, Manuel Martinez, Tracy O’Neill, Tim O’Sullivan, Jackie Reitzes, and Seamus Scanlon.
The Children’s Book Council announced the winners of the Children’s Choice Book Awards. Jeff Kinney was author of the year and Brian Selznick was illustrator of the year.
Tuesday morning, the NYT reported that Maurice Sendak, 83, died earlier in the day due to complications from a recent stroke, according to his longtime editor Michael di Capua. (The AP says he suffered the stroke last Friday night and never regained consciousness.) He is “widely considered the most important children’s book artist of the 20th century, who wrenched the picture book out of the safe, sanitized world of the nursery and plunged it into the dark, terrifying and hauntingly beautiful recesses of the human psyche.”
My Brother’s Book, a poem written and illustrated by Sendak “and inspired by his love for his late brother, Jack,” is currently scheduled for publication by HarperCollins Children’s in February 2013.