Sara Sargent will return to Harper Children’s on July 13, in the new position of executive editor, reporting to Kate Jackson. She will acquire teen, middle grade and picture book fiction and nonfiction titles “created from or around digital and social media content. Sargent was most recently at Simon & Schuster,
Robert Bolick is joining the International Baccalaureate (IB) as head of digital publishing & language services. After many years at McGraw-Hill Education, most recently he has been director of digital business transformation at the British Standards Institution.
Awards
The ALA presented their Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence to Anthony Doerr for All the Light We Cannot See for fiction, and to Bryan Stevenson for Just Mercy for nonfiction.
Obituary
Former ceo of the American Booksellers Association and one-time co-owner of the Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops in Milwaukee, Avin Mark Domnitz, 71, died of cancer on Saturday. Shelf Awareness reports that the funeral is scheduled for 1:00 on Wednesday at the Goodman-Bensman Funeral Home, 4750 N. Santa Monica Blvd., in Whitefish Bay, WI. “The family has asked that in lieu of flowers, memorial contributions be made to the ABA or a charity of your choice.”
Initiatives
Columbia University Press will work in collaboration with Read Russia (and, through grants, the Russian government) to publish “an ambitious new series of Russian literature in translation.” The project will commission and publish “dozens, and perhaps more than 100, new translations of Russian modern literature and classics.”
Relocated
In Toronto, the Canadian units of Penguin and Random House have come together in a single, new open plan office on Front Street. This Globe and Mail article aspires to a larger, existential look at, “What will Penguin Random House Canada become?” But practically, the most important element is buried deep within the story: “While the various imprints can compete against one another for the same book, agents and authors will have to choose between competing visions, rather than different bids.” CEO Brad Martin confirms, “In Canada they’re not going to be different, and that’s just the way it’s going to be.” He adds, “Why would you bid against each other? Scale is supposed to mean something. This is a small market.”
Knopf Canada publishing director Lynn Henry says separately, “We still compete with each other for books. It’s just that the terms of the competition have changed. We don’t really compete so much financially as we do in terms of the vision. And often our publishing visions can be very different.”