Ben George has joined Penguin as an editor, starting today. He was co-founder and editorial director of Lookout Books of Wilmington, NC and editor for the last four years of the literary magazine Ecotone.
Kristen Fritz has been named senior director, content marketing, digital marketplace development at Random House, Inc.
Clay Smith has joined Kirkus Media as features editor, reporting to chief operating officer Meg Kuehn. Most recently he was literary director of the Texas Book Festival.
In the UK, Ella Diamond Kahn and Bryony Woods have launched a literary agency, Diamond Kahn and Woods. Diamond Kahn was an assistant agent at Andrew Nurnberg Associates; Woods was at the Caroline Sheldon Literary Agency.
VIZ Media has renewed its sales and distribution partnership with Simon & Schuster, which began in 2004.
Scholastic announced that it will donate one million books to schools and libraries in the hardest-hit areas of the New York, New Jersey and Connecticut region. They are accepting book grant requests at www.scholastic.com/bookgrants and aim to provide new books and resources to help get “students reading and learning again, despite severely challenging circumstances.”