Joel Scotkin has joined Open Road in the new role of chief technology officer, reporting to ceo Jane Friedman. Scotkin was previously ceo and founder of the technology consulting firm Random Walk and later ceo and lead investor in Masten Space Systems, a start-up focused on reusable space travel.
Michelle Richter is joining Foreword Literary as an associate agent. She has been an editor at St. Martin’s. She is planning to represent a broad selection of fiction, and nonfiction focused on fashion, film, television, science, medicine, sociology/social trends, and economics for trade audiences.
Jana Burson has launched The Burson Agency, a literary agency and speakers bureau. She had been an editor for the FaithWords and Center Street imprints of Hachette Book Group and before then, the imprints’ director of publicity.
Dr. James Lance has joined WordWise Media Service as a literary agent. He was an acquisitions editor for Kumarian Press. He’ll focus on scholarly but reader-friendly books in international relations, environmental science and policy, anthropology, economics, history, public health, cultural studies, public administration, US foreign policy, and philanthropy.
The Hugo Award nominees were announced over the weekend.
IMPAC award winner for No Great Mischief and “one of Canada’s great short story writers” Alistair MacLeod, 77, died over the weekend. Ellen Seligman at McClelland and Stewart commented: “Alistair MacLeod was a truly great writer, and human being. He was also a gifted and revered teacher of English Literature. His magnificently crafted stories and his only novel contain a compassion and beauty of language, and a deep wisdom and universal truth that are rare. His passing is a tremendous loss to Canada and to literature, but his work will endure.”
The NYT remembers literary agent Lois Wallace, 73, whose passing we noted earlier in the month.