Ian Buruma has been named editor of The New York Review of Books, succeeding co-founder Robert B. Silvers who died recently. Buruma has been a regular contributor to The New York Review since 1985, in addition to other publications including The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Guardian, and La Repubblica. He is also the Paul W. Williams Professor of Democracy, Human Rights, and Journalism at Bard College. Publisher Rea Hederman said in the release, “Ian’s long relationship with both founding editors will preserve the editorial quality and independence for which the Review has been known since its first issue in 1963.”
Leah Miller will join Grand Central Life & Style as senior editor, starting May 30. Most recently she was senior editor at Rodale.
Ben Hyman will join Bloomsbury USA on June 5 as senior editor for nonfiction in the adult trade division, reporting to Nancy Miller. Previously, he was associate editor at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Scholastic announced a number of promotions and appointments. Lizette Serrano was promoted to senior director of educational marketing and event strategy, while Rachel Feld moved up to senior director of marketing. Michelle Campbell becomes marketing manager; Devin MacDonald is assistant marketing manager; and Vaishali Nayak is now senior marketing coordinator. Abby Stahlman moves up to to senior designer for marketing.
Samantha Palazzi has moved over to publishing manager for the Chicken House and David Fickling Books imprints. She was previously project manager at Scholastic in the national partnerships department. In new hires, Matthew Poulter is marketing manager for educational marketing (he was at the Children’s Book Council); Shara Zaval is marketing manager for picture books (she was US publicity and marketing manager at Faber & Faber); and Vanessa Han is a designer at Klutz (she was a designer at Penguin Random House).
At Workman, Vanessa Karalis has been promoted to assistant manager of sales operations. Cheryl Clayton joins as senior manager of digital operations; previously she was metadata operations manager at Norton. Olivia Swomley has joined from HarperCollins as an associate editor for children’s. Elissa Santos, who has been at Workman part-time, joins the production department full-time as typesetter. Kayla Burson has been hired as assistant manager of mail order, specialty wholesale, and online retail. She was previously in the special markets department at Penguin Random House. Zelina Bennett has joined as a digital marketing coordinator for the Workman imprint.
Victoria Chao joined Chronicle Books as design studio manager (she was marketing consultant for Square); while Michelle Park joined as visual content coordinator (she was marketing and creative designer for Saint Frank Coffee).
Canada’s McGill University is relaunching the Cundill History Prize, now in its tenth year, “to highlight history writing as a way to illuminate the truth at a time in world affairs when informed, factual debate is increasingly losing out to populism and retrenchment is on the rise.” The prize will provide the winner with $75,000.