Maria Ribas and Paul Lamb have joined the Howard Morhaim Literary agency as literary agents. Ribas was an associate editor at Adams Media and will continue to focus on cookbooks, self-help, health, diet, parenting, and humor. Lamb was most recently senior marketing manager at Viking, and will focus on representing non-fiction in the areas of business, memoir, political science, sociology and sports, as well as crime, mystery and literary fiction.
Gypsy da Silva will retire from Simon & Schuster on April 30 after more than 47 years in publishing, the last 26 as associate director of copy editing for the company’s adult trade imprint. Irene Kheradi commented that da Silva “is a true author whisperer, giving her all for each and every writer she works with, and it is this loyalty—her ability to put authors at ease and, as she says, ‘let them know you are their aide-de-camp’—that has earned her the lasting respect and friendship of countless editors and authors. She is equally at home shepherding to publication long and complex nonfiction works as handling the much faster turnaround schedules for some of our bestselling novelists.”
Author David McCullough writes in a note, “You have not just been someone I’ve worked with and learned from, you have been a treasure of a partner in this group effort we call being an author.” He adds: “People often ask me why I’ve stayed with Simon & Schuster all these years, and I say it’s because of people like Gypsy da Silva.”
Juliette van Wersch will take over as publisher at Signatuur Publishers in Holland on May 1. She has been associate publisher for fiction at the parent company’s Bruna imprint. She will join the Arbeiderspers/Bruna management team and report to CEO Johan de Koning.
Random House has added an online bookshop curating over 10,000 cookbooks and food-related titles from all publishers to their TasteBook.com community.
Finally, correcting Tuesday’s item, Nic Elliot new title at S&S Children’s is marketing coordinator.