Founders and current editorial directors of Kar-Ben Publishing Judye Groner and Madeline Wikler will retire in December after nearly 40 years in publishing, beginning with the 1974 publication of MY VERY OWN HAGGADAH. Kar-Ben was acquired by Lerner Publishing in 2001 and became the company’s Jewish children’s book imprint. Kar-Ben publisher Joni Sussman said in a statement: “We thank Judye and Madeline for their enormous contribution to Kar-Ben and to the field of Jewish children’s books over the years, and for helping us to grow Kar-Ben into one of the largest and best known Jewish-themed children’s book publishers in the world.”
At Kirkus Media, Claiborne ‘Clay’ Smith has been promoted from features editor to the new position of editor in chief. He reports to coo Meg LaBorde Kuehn.
Dana Trocker has joined Simon & Schuster as associate marketing manager. Previously, she was speaker relations coordinator at Macmillan Speakers Bureau.
Mozambican author António Emílio Leite Couto (Mia Couto) won the biennial $50,000 2014 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. Co-sponsor World Literature Today says “his first novel and the novel that was the representative text for the Neustadt, Sleepwalking Land, was published in 1992 to great acclaim and is widely considered one of the best African books of the 20th century.”
Lucy Hughes-Hallett‘s THE PIKE won the UK’s Samuel Johnson Prize for nonfiction. (Yes, we inadvertently re-ran the shortlist Monday ahead of the prize ceremony that evening.)
Ben Bradlee, Jr. has won PEN New England’s 2013 Cerulli Award (for excellence in sportswriting/biography) for THE KID: The Immortal Life of Ted Williams, to be published on December 3 by Little, Brown.
Abry Partners, which helped finance Cambridge Information Group’s $222 million purchase of Proquest in 2007, has sold their stake to an affiliate of Goldman Sachs. The announcement implies that Goldman acquired more than just Abry’s minority share, acquiring “a significant minority equity interest…including” Abry’s stake, and declares that “Goldman Sachs will join majority shareholder Cambridge Information Group as a partner.” Cambridge ceo Andy Snyder previously worked for the Goldman Sachs Group for seven years.