Valerie Steiker will join Scribner as executive editor on April 17. Previously, she was the longtime culture editor at Vogue. Reporting to Colin Harrison and Nan Graham, she will acquire and edit fiction, memoir, narrative non-fiction, and lifestyle books.
Parisa Ebrahimi joins the Crown and Hogarth fiction team today as editor. She moves over from Chatto & Windus in London and reports to Lindsay Sagnette.
Rebecca Marsh has joined Viking/Penguin Books as publicity manager. Previously, she was a senior publicist for Crown Archetype, Harmony, and Three Rivers Press.
Forthcoming Audio
Robert Caro has written and narrated an audiobook-only title, ON POWER, releasing on May 9, billed as "a private audience with the legendary author as he tells the personal stories that shaped him as a reporter and informed his understanding of political power."
Commissioned by Tyler Cabot at Audible after seeing Caro speak at Harvard, the title draws on Caro's many years researching and evaluating President Lyndon Johnson and municipal builder Robert Moses. Caro tells the AP: "My books are an attempt to examine and explain political power: how it is created, how it works, how it can be used – for good and for ill. I thought it was important to try to do that because that power shapes all our lives – in ways large and small. And I felt that the more America understands about political power, the better informed our voters would be, and then, hopefully, the better our democracy would be."
Simon & Schuster will release an audiobook version of Stephen King's THE DEAD ZONE for the first time on April 25, narrated by James Franco.
Bookselling
The 6,000-square-foot Amazon Books store in Chicago's Lakeview neighborhood opens on Tuesday. Amazon Books vp Jennifer Cast tells the Chicago Tribune of their growing bookstore efforts ,"We just believe that we can do this well, and we believe that if we do it well, we will have an even stronger relationship with our customers." This location includes a coffee shop (serving Stumptown) and will have outdoor seating in the summer.
Obituaries
Publisher George Braziller, 101, died on Thursday in Manhattan. The NYT notes his "small, independent publishing house introduced Americans to groundbreaking novelists, poets and new voices from abroad, including those of Jean-Paul Sartre and Orhan Pamuk, and the works of 20th-century and classical artists in fine reprints." His son Joel Braziller told the paper: "That was his driving goal and ambition — to bring good writers and artists to the American public. He was not interested in money. He published great writers and series of books on great artists and architects, and he did it in affordable editions."
Poet, playwright, and Nobel laureate Derek Walcott, 87, died Friday, at his home in St. Lucia. The author of numerous books and plays, including his best-known work Omeros, he was also a MacArthur Fellow, among other accolades.
Also, journalist and author Jimmy Breslin, 88, died on Sunday.
