The UK’s Atlantic Books announced Thursday that founder, ceo and publisher Toby Mundy has resigned from the company after 14 years, and will leave on June 30. He said in the announcement, “Everything must come to an end and I feel sure that the time is right to pursue new adventures in this exciting, unpredictable industry. Our authors could not be in better hands and I look forward to toasting their future triumphs.” Atlantic “will announce plans for his replacement in due course.”
Allen & Unwin purchased a majority stake in the company in January after a few years of significant losses, and a restructuring that eliminated some positions and included the exit of editor-in-chief Ravi Mirchandani. Atlantic Books chair Peter Roche said in the statement, “Toby Mundy has led the company throughout with great energy and total commitment. I thank him for his outstanding contribution and wish him every success in the future.”
Mundy also said in the release: “I have been with Atlantic Books for 14 exhilarating years, starting the company, with the investment and encouragement of Morgan Entrekin of Grove/Atlantic Inc., in my spare bedroom at home. Although those years haven’t always been easy, I am enormously proud of the firm’s achievements in that time. I have had the privilege of playing a part in the discovery and publication of hundreds of excellent books and of working with a legion of outstanding colleagues. I am grateful to those colleagues and, of course, to our wonderful authors, for their friendship, trust and support.”
In other news, Charles Wright, 78, will be named as the new US Poet Laureate today by the Library of Congress. The author of 24 collections of poetry, he will take on the one-year post in September. Librarian of Congress James Billington says, “Charles Wright is a master of the meditative, image-driven lyric. Wright’s body of work combines a Southern sensibility with an allusive expansiveness, for moments of singular musicality.”
Author Elin Hilderbrand reveals in the Huffington Post that a month before the publication of her just-released The Matchmaker , in which one of the main characters battles cancer, “I discovered that I am also entering this battle. I have been diagnosed with breast cancer.” She is scheduled to undergo a double mastectomy tomorrow. “I make a living telling stories, and yet my desire to tell the truth here is so overwhelming that it cannot be denied…. I have come to grips, but only very recently, with the fact that I am not a fictional character whose emotions I can control. My story will have an ending, but it will not be me who writes it.”
Simon & Schuster will produce its own series of live authors events, the Hamptons Summer Series, “celebrating the power, perseverance, and resilience of women.” Four events, beginning June 26, will feature lectures from authors Amanda Lindhout, Zhena Muzyka, Susannah Cahalan, and Helen Thorpe. The series will be held at Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center, and Books & Books Westhampton Beach has been invited in to provide onsite book sales.
Sara Ortiz will join Scholastic as marketing manager, education/library marketing (she was most recently at Penguin). In promotions at Scholastic, Lizette Serrano is now director of education/library marketing and conventions, taking over from John Mason, who is retiring on July 3 after 28 years at the company and more than 43 years in publishing. Samantha Schutz has been promoted to associate publisher, licensing & nonfiction; Sheila Marie Everett is now associate director of publicity; Becky Amsel moves up to publicity manager; and Alexandra Wladich has been promoted to senior publicist, corporate communications.
In awards, Juan Gabriel Vasquez won the Impac Dublin Award for The Sound of Things Falling.