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People, Etc.

April 22, 2015
By Sarah Weinman

Ken Michaels has been named ceo of Macmillan Higher Education and Macmillan New Ventures, taking up the post after the merger of MacmillanScience and Education and Springer Science closes. Michaels wil report to John Sargent in the new position, which includes the US-based higher education publishing that Macmillan retains outright after the merger. (He is currently global chief operating office of MSE.)

Ruta Rimas has been promoted to senior editor at Margaret K. McElderry Books.

Siena Koncsol
has joined Harlequin Teen as publicity manager. Previously she was a publicist at S&S Children’s.

Domenica Alioto is being promoted to senior editor for Crown.

Jennifer Johnson-Blalock has joined Liza Dawson Associates as an associate literary agent. She was previously an assistant at Trident Media Group.

In the UK, Caroline Ridding will join Head of Zeus in August to lead a new mass-market fiction imprint, Aria. Focused on ebook publication, the line will launch in spring 2016. Ridding is currently publisher of Avon UK.

Awards
Pulitzer Prize administrator Mike Pride tells the WSJ that the Pulitzer board asked the fiction jury to provide a fourth candidate — which explains why there were three “finalists” instead of the usual two. Pride says “there was some worry expressed among board members” when reading the initial three finalists, leading to the request that the jury provide a fourth option. The board was working to avoid the situation in 2012, when no fiction prize was awarded. The implication is that winner Anthony Doerr might well have been the fourth finalist, though the WSJ writes, “It isn’t clear whether Mr. Doerr’s book was the fourth submitted to the board. Pulitzer officials declined to say whether it was the final submission.”

Conveniently, WSJ editorial-page editor Paul Gigot just took over running the Pulitzer board: “We have a process in place that if some board members want to request a fourth book in any of the book categories, they can…. And that’s what happened in this case.” He indicated that Doerr’s novel received a majority of votes, though there was support for other fiction nominees on the board as well.

The annual $30,000 Rea Award for the Short Story has gone to T.C. Boyle. The jurors said in part in their citation: “T.C. Boyle is a genuine American original…[and] has furnished his own highly public and deluxe corner of contemporary American letters.  His stories fairly glitter with imagination, an immense variety, hilarity, ambition and achieved talent.”

The Hillman Prizes for Journalism honored Edward Baptist‘s The Half Has Never Been Told for book journalism.

The UK’s Orwell Prize for nonfiction announced their shortlist of six titles.

Contests
BEA is bringing back the BookExpo Startup Challenge competition. “Early stage startups in the publishing space” have until May 8 to register.

Obituary
Essayist and author of over a dozen books, including The Rothschilds (1962) Frederic Morton, 90, died in his sleep Monday in a Vienna hotel room.

Filed Under: Agency News, Free, Personnel

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