After being removed from her position as Register of Copyrights and appointed to a new senior advisor role, Maria Pallante has resigned instead, Politico reported. Her resignation was confirmed by an LOC spokesperson. In Pallante’s letter of resignation, she writes: “I hope that you will respect that I do not accept the reassignment to work on Library matters that was announced on Friday.” Confirming at least part of Billboard’s account of her dismissal, Pallante adds: “I would be grateful for your accommodation as I say goodbye to colleagues and collect personal items this week, and would appreciate the reinstatement of access to my computer and email so that I may appropriately archive records and remove photos of my family.” A separate posted letter from Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden contains significantly more detail than the LOC press release about the new tasks she hoped Pallante would take on — including determining a “legally sufficient and efficient procedure” to allow LOC staff to clear books published between 1923 and 1968 as free of copyright and eligible for “digitization and online distribution.”
At Orbit, Brit Hvide and Lindsey Hall have both been promoted to editor. In addition, Sarah Guan and Bradley Englert have both joined as associate editors. Guan was previously an assistant editor at DAW, while Englert was previously at Skyhorse.
Michael Caligaris has joined Holloway Literary as an agent. He is a co-founder of The East Bay Review, and previously a member of the PLOS One publications team. In addition, Jamie Vankirk has joined as associate agent. Vankirk previously was an assistant and office manager at Liza Dawson Associates.
Meaghan Porter has been promoted to senior editor at the W Publishing Group.
In the UK, agent Carrie Plitt is moving to Felicity Bryan Associates, from Conville & Walsh.
VK Karthika has resigned as publisher at HarperCollins India after 10 years at the company in a move that has surprised many. Ananth Padmanabhan, who took over as ceo a year ago, told the Huffington Post: “As publisher, Karthika has built invaluable relationships between HarperCollins and its authors, agents and publishers, not just in India but around the world as well…. She has been a dear friend and colleague and will be missed.”
Awards
Canada’s Governor General Literary Awards were announced Tuesday morning. Madeleine Thien, whose novel Do Not Say We Have Nothing is also up for the Booker Prize tonight as well as shortlisted for the Giller Prize, won in fiction, while Bill Walser won in nonfiction for A World We Have Lost: Saskatchewan Before 1905 (Fifth House Publishers).
Bookstores
The Amazon Books store on Chicago‘s Southport Avenue (near Wrigley Field) looks to be coming sooner rather than later in 2017. The company listed a variety of job openings at the planned store in late September. It would likely by the fifth Amazon Books store to open, since job listings for the planned Dedham, MA appeared earlier in September.
Book Passage plans to open a third story in Sausalito, CA. The new 1800-square foot store will be located a block or so north of the terminal for the ferry to and from San Francisco, owner Bill Petrocelli told Shelf Awareness, with a soft opening planned for about a month’s time and a grand opening early next year.