John Joseph Adams will join Houghton Mifflin Harcourt as editor at large, running the company’s new science fiction & fantasy line under the John Joseph Adams/HMH banner. The first three titles in the line — reissued print versions of Hugh Howey’s SHIFT, DUST, and BEACON 23 — will be published in February simultaneously as hardcovers and trade paperbacks (Howey will continue to publish the ebook editions.) HMH svp, publisher Bruce Nichols said in the announcement: “Science fiction and fantasy have been among the most exciting and creative literary genres in recent years. This fall, we added the first-ever BEST AMERICAN SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY to our Best American series. After working with John as the series editor for that volume, we realized he is the perfect person to help us curate a focused, high-quality fiction list. We are thrilled to launch John’s line with Hugh Howey, and we look forward to many more authors to come.”
At Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, Dan Meyer has been promoted to associate editor.
BookCon Chi has announced their first featured authors for the May 14 show — back to a single day as it moves along with BEA to Chicago. Initial authors include Leigh Bardugo, Meg Cabot, Danielle Paige, Marissa Meyer, and Samantha Bee (talking about her middle grade novel).
Jeff Alexander, Becky Cabaza, Jane Fleming Fransson, and Julie Miesionczek are now members of Words into Print, a group of independent editors that has been providing editorial services to writers, agents, and publishers since 1998.
Forthcoming
Little, Brown will publish a “posthumous manifesto” by Stéphane Charbonnier, the editor in chief of French magazine Charlie Hebdo, OPEN LETTER: On Blasphemy, Islamophobia and the True Enemies of Free Expression, in January 2016 — one year after the attack on the magazine’s offices in which Charb and 11 others were killed. The manuscript was completed just days before his murder. The book will have a foreword by Adam Gopnik.
CEO of Hachette Livre Arnaud Nourry says in the announcement: “The murder of Stéphane Charbonnier and his colleagues at Charlie Hebdo was a tragic moment for France, and for the world. To have journalists and illustrators silenced so brutally for lampooning bullies and extremists was a brazen attack on the fundamental freedom to publish. I am pleased that we will be able to share Charbonnier’s views with readers, and to contribute to the conversation about the insidiousness of religious intolerance.”
Obituary
Rena Wolner, 70, died from lung cancer on November 7 in Delray Beach, FL. Wolner was publisher and president of Berkley Publishing, served briefly as president of Pocket Books, and then worked as president of Avon Books. She retired from publishing in 1994.
Penguin Random House wrote to employees: “With her distinctive Boston accent, her great publishing mind and a heart to match, Rena was a president and a publisher who was as smart about and attentive to the details as she was to the big picture; she was simultaneously a collaborative team player and an independent thinker. Thriving at a time when there were fewer women in the top publishing-leadership jobs than there are today, she inspired and motivated a generation of women executives, always making time to encourage them in their careers, helping them learn from missteps and championing them at their best…. She was a great as a publishing leader, and even greater as a person. Our loss is great.”