Sourcebooks ceo Dominique Raccah was honored at the opening of BEA on Wednesday with their Industry Ambassador Award.
Former IPG distribution executive Mark Suchomel has joined Perseus Books Group’s distribution client services group and will run a new division based in Chicago, Legato Publishing Group. It will operate as “an affiliate” of PGW, “leveraging some of PGW’s scale and best practices in serving independent publishers.”
The Random House Publishing Group announced a number of promotions in its publicity department. Maria Braeckel has been promoted to assistant director of publicity, while Greg Kubie moves up to publicity manager. In addition, Michelle Jasmine has been promoted to senior publicist and Ella Maslin moves up to associate publicist.
Michael Connor has left his position as director, editorial lead for The Quality Paperback Book Club/Insightout Book Club at Direct Brands. He is looking for new opportunities and can be reached at michaelconnor718@gmail.com
The Natan Book Award, which aspires to establish a new model for literary prizes by supporting a book in its development stage with $15,000 for the author, and then supplies up to $35,000 for promotion after the book is published, picked its inaugural winner: Israeli journalist Ari Shavit, for MY PROMISED LAND, his narrative history of the State of Israel. Spiegel & Grau is publishing November 19. (The Natan Award focuses on “an exceptional, not-yet-published, non-fiction book on Jewish themes that has the potential to catalyze new conversations about Jewish life.”)
Open Road will publish digital editions of 10 early novels by Michael Crichton, written under the pseudonyms Jeffery Hudson, John Lange, and Michael Douglas in the 1960s while he was a medical student, on July 23.
Science fiction writer Jack Vance, 96, died May 26 in Oakland, CA. Considered to be one of the most influential authors in the genre from the post-war period for novels including the Dying Earth Sequence (which began with 1950’s THE DYING EARTH and concluded with RHIALTO THE MARVELOUS in 1984), Vance won the World Fantasy Award for lifetime achievement in 1984; the SFWA Grand Master Award in 1997; and he was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2001.
Andrew Greeley, 85, the Roman Catholic priest and author of more than 50 bestselling mysteries and thrillers as well as many works of nonfiction, died Wednesday night at his home in Chicago. Greeley suffered a traumatic brain injury in 2008 and never regained full cognitive function.