Alaina Mauro has joined Little, Brown as publishing director, James Patterson. Previously she was a digital sales account manager at Penguin Children’s.
Daniella Valladares will join Little, Brown Children’s as assistant editor, brand, licensed, and media tie-in publishing. She was most recently an assistant editor at HarperCollins.
Sarah Williams has joined Penguin Random House as vp, director, strategy & development, special markets. Previously she was executive editor, business development at Chronicle Books.
Diana Ventimiglia has joined North Star Way as editor. Most recently she was an editor at Sterling Publishing, where she focused on the culinary, mind/body/spirit, lifestyle, health, and pop culture genres.
At the UK’s Booksellers Association, owner and founder of The Mainstreet Trading Company Rosamund de la Hey has taken over as president, succeeding Tim Walker.
Longtime Penguin Random House sales executive Glenn Ellis, 70, died Monday at the Calvary Hospital Hospice in the Bronx from complications of cancer. Ellis spent four decades with the company, most recently as vp, director of adult field sales until his retirement in 2014. President of PRH sales Jaci Updike writes: “What Glenn knew best was this: how to create leaders. He had an extraordinary talent for knowing how to make his team feel fully supported, while at the same time pushing them to achieve even more…. The roster of people who were touched by Glenn’s mentorship include sales and publishing, both at Penguin Random House and many other publishing houses, small and large.” The memorial service is Friday, April 15 at the Fred H. McGrath & Son funeral home at 20 Cedar Street in Bronxville, NY.
Awards
The NYPL has announced its newest class of Cullman Center Fellows, including novelists Carys Davies, Angela Fluornoy, Daniel Kehlmann, Salvatore Scibona, Akhil Sharma; poet Sally Weng Mao; and nonfiction writers George Packer, Jennifer Homans, Jon Gertner, and Jonathan Stevenson.
The London Book Fair presented their set of sponsored international publishing awards. Among the honorees were: Words Without Borders (literary translation); Actes Sud (adult trade publisher) Jieli Publishing House (children’s/YA trade publisher); and the Barbara J. Zitwer Agency (literary agent).
Initiatives
Harlequin has put out a press release proclaiming that their North American and UK divisions now have a “united strategy” to buy world English rights in order “to acquire and promote significant commercial fiction.”
Vearsa has raised an additional €3.5 million in its latest round of funding. As a result the company has made several new hires, including Damien Dennehy and Steven Davern in IT, and Justin Marks in content marketing.
The previously announced joint sales team of The MIT Press, Princeton University Press, and Yale University Press that begins in spring 2017 is now officially known as University Press Sales Associates.