Trish Todd is returning to Touchstone as vp, executive editor — reporting to Susan Moldow. Todd had been at Touchstone for 15 years, up until 2010, where she was editor-in-chief, before moving over to Simon & Schuster. Moldow writes to staff, “In the more than twenty years that Trish and I have both served in various capacities at Simon & Schuster, I have always hoped that we might work directly together.”
Marilynne Robinson is retiring from her position as a F. Wendell Miller Professor at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop after teaching there for 25 years. Thereafter she will serve as professor emerita.
Mary Rowles is retiring from IPG, where she was publisher development manager, on May 6 after more than 15 years with the company. Succeeding Rowles is Richard T. Williams, formerly director of IPG’s small press united (SPU) division.
Author and essayist Jenny Diski, 68, died of inoperable lung cancer early Thursday morning. Her final book, In Gratitude, was published last week in the UK and will be published in the US next month by Bloomsbury.
One of the founders of commission sales group Canadian Manda, James Chalmers, 73, died on April 25 of cancer. A celebration of James’ life will be held at Islington Golf Club, 45 Riverbank Drive, Etobicoke, ON on Tuesday, May 3 from 1-4 pm, with remembrances shared at 2 pm.
Awards
Andrea Barrett has won the Rea Award for the Short Story, honoring a “significant contribution to the discipline of the short story as an art form.”
Joy Williams has been named the 2016 PEN/Malamud Award for Short Fiction honoree. Selection committee member Richard Ford writes: “Joy Williams’ short stories are, sentence to sentence, incandescent, witty, alarming, often hilarious while affecting seeming inadvertence (but not really) in their powerful access to our human condition. She is a stirring writer and has long been deserving of the Malamud Award.”
Six finalists were named for the Chautauqua Prize, with the winner to be announced in mid-May.