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People: McGuire Leaving Ballantine Bantam Dell; Kloske Appointed Riverhead President; and More

November 5, 2015
By Sarah Weinman

Ballantine Bantam Dell executive vice president and publisher Libby McGuire will leave the company at the end of the year in order to “dedicate her time to seeking and creating new professional opportunities for herself,” RH Publishing Group president and publisher Gina Centrello writes. She notes McGuire’s departure “with great respect for those accomplishments, and for her wish to reenvision her career.”

McGuire has spent more than 15 years at what became Ballantine Bantam Dell; her direct reports will report to Gina Centrello for an interim period. “Libby and her world-class publishing team are admired industry-wide for the creativity and care with which they implement their publishing opportunities,” Centrello notes in the announcement. “Libby’s astute sensibilities and acumen have immeasurably enriched our publishing programs. I speak for everyone at Random House in thanking her for her fifteen-year partnership with us, and for her leadership. She has bestowed us with an enormous, wonderful legacy to build upon.”

Riverhead Books publisher Geoff Kloske has also been appointed president in the midst of an “extraordinary run” that saw Riverhead’s books and authors “selling faster, and earning more awards and accolades, than at any time in the imprint’s illustrious history,” according to Penguin Publishing Group president Madeline McIntosh. She says further in the announcement: “To a one, this imprint is populated with talented individuals. But it does take one in particular to bring the team together and pave the way for them to shine, and that is what Geoff does every day. Inspiring and guiding everyone at Riverhead to take an innovative, no-stone-unturned approach to their work, he models an inclusive and entrepreneurial style that makes the group greater than its parts. We all benefit from his razor-sharp insight, relentless determination, and focus on the future as well as the backlist, and devotion to Riverhead’s mission, books and authors.”

Adriann Ranta has moved to Foundry Literary + Media after six years at Wolf Literary Services. She will be followed by her clients, including Kendare Blake, Mindy McGinnis, Sarah Gerard, and Alana Massey.

At Chronicle Books, Michael Morris has been promoted to design director.

At Harlequin, Shannon Criss has been promoted to editor, Kimani Romance.

Allison Judd moves over to Random House Children’s Books as publicist, from the Crown Publishing Group.

In the UK, WH Smith has hired former Tesco category director Lucy Menendez as director of books at WH Smith, filling the position vacated by Michael Neil in the spring.

Opening
The Association of American University Presses is opening its first Washington, DC, office, provided by member Brookings Institution Press, “in order to further its strategic goals of advocacy and collaboration with stakeholders in higher education, copyright, freedom of expression, scholarly communications, the humanities, and global policy.” Executive director Peter Berkery will divide his time between Washington and New York.

Awards
André Alexis has won Canada’s Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Award for Fifteen Dogs (Coach House). He noted, “We’re in the middle of something really, really intriguing. A renaissance of small presses flourishing under the strain of changes in the book world.”

Roxane Gay has been named the recipient of the 2015 PEN Center USA Freedom to Write Award.

Filed Under: Agency News, Authors, Awards, Free, Personnel

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