Director of publicity for Bloomsbury Children’s and Walker Children’s Katy Hershberger is leaving. She will start next week as an associate director of publicity for Simon & Schuster Children’s, as well as the Atheneum, and Margaret McElderry Books imprint.
Following the sale of AP Watt to United Agents late last year, Derek Johns will retire at the end of November. He has been at AP Watt since 1992.
At Harlequin’s Mira, Tara Parsons has been promoted to editorial director.
Casey Maloney joined Picador as senior publicist. She was most recently a publicist at Penguin, working on the Gotham, Avery, Viking Studio imprints.
Emily Angell has been promoted to editor for Portfolio, Sentinel, and Current; Natalie Horbachevsky has been promoted to associate editor.
Open Road co-founder and former chief operating officer Chris Lederer has joined PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) as a principal in their advisory business, helping to lead the strategy practice in the Entertainment, Media and Communications. He will focus on publishing and advertising deal strategy, based in New York.
Sergio De La Pava‘s A NAKED SINGULARITY, originally self-published in 2008 and then republished by the University of Chicago Press in 2012, has won the PEN/Bingham prize. (The WSJ had named it one of their 10 favorite works of fiction in 2012.) The full list of PEN Award winners is here.
In other awards news, the Morgan Library in New York City will open a Bookermania exhibition on September 13, honoring 45 years of the Booker Prize.
Stephenie Meyer talks to Variety ahead of the theatrical release of Austenland, based on Shannon Hale’s novel, which Meyer’s Fickle Fish Films developed and produced. Without a lot of explanation, Meyer says of Twilight, “I am so over it. For me, it’s not a happy place to be.” She adds, “What I would probably do is three paragraphs on my blog saying which of the characters died. I’m interested in spending time in other worlds, like Middle-Earth.”
The closing of Thomas Nelson’s Nashville warehouse, previously announced by HarperCollins, will eliminate 102 jobs by some time next year, the Tennessean reports. The facility has been put up for sale.
Beacon Press has a multi-year extension of their sales and distribution relationship with Random House Publisher Services, which began in 2010.
The Gill family of Ireland has bought back the 50 percent share in Gill & Macmillan owned by Macmillan Science and Education. The company publishes both educational books as well as trade titles.