At Italy’s Garzanti Libri, editorial director Oliviero Ponte di Pino has resigned after more than 20 years there. Paolo Zaninoni, who has been editorial director of Rizzoli and BUR since 2003, will take over at a time to be announced. As part of the reorganization director of Garzanti foreign fiction Elisabetta Migliavada will also serve as director of Italian fiction.
Nellie Kurtzman will join Little, Brown Books for Young Readers as vp, marketing. She was most recently director of digital and trade marketing at Disney/Hyperion.
At PS Literary Agency, Irene Merritt has been named literary assistant.
World Book Night US confirmed that their campaign will return again next year on World Book Night, set for Tuesday, April 23, 2013. They say “plans are already in motion on several fronts to match and exceed the successes of the campaign’s first year.” A panel of librarians, independent booksellers and Barnes & Noble buyers are already voting for the WBN 2013 selections–with the process including the top 50 titles from among 20,000 suggestions elicited from the original group of volunteer book givers. The selected books will be announced in the fall.
In a memo sent to contributors, editor of The Writer Jeff Reich said the magazine will go “on hiatus” after more than 125 years of publication, and the October 2012 issue would be the last one for now. According to Reich, owner Kalmbach Publishing “is currently looking for a buyer for the magazine, and our hope is that The Writer will re-emerge under the careful stewardship of a new owner.”