Annie Proulx will receive the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters at the awards ceremony on November 15, honored “for her exceptional work and significant impact on American literature.” Actor Anne Hathaway (who starred in the film adaptation of Brokeback Mountain) will present the award. Proulx tells the AP, “I was astonished when first I heard that news. I simply had not thought of my various writings as a body of work that might be considered as a contribution to American letters. It almost seemed that I had been negligent in writing what I considered discrete novels […]
Archives for September 2017
People, Etc.
Byrd Leavell has moved to UTA. Waxman Leavell Literary Agency will revert to its original name, Waxman Literary Agency. Azia Cheng has been promoted to ceo of Penguin Random House North Asia, reporting to Markus Dohle, effective immediately. She has been sales director there since 2008 and succeeds Helen Duan, who departed last month. The Frankfurt Book Fair announced their 16 fellows for this year. New Directions editor Tynan Kogane is the first Fred Kobrak Frankfurt Fellow, a new award that will fund one participant a year for the next ten years. Awards Canada’s big Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for […]
Sales Starts: Clinton Tops a Big Week for New Titles
A wave of big books landed last Tuesday, with Hillary Clinton’s What Happened registering the biggest opening week, topping Bookscan’s chart with just under 168,000 print copies sold across the outlets they track — which publisher Simon & Schuster notes is “the biggest first week sales recorded by any author for a hardcover nonfiction title published since 2012.” (That’s almost twice the opening week sales in June 2014 of Hard Choices, which moved approximately 86,000 print books — and was said to have comprised total sales of 100,000 to 120,000 units in the first week — though well behind opening […]
Awards: Whiting Will Support Nonprofit Literary Magazines
The Whiting Foundation announced a new initiative to support small nonprofit literary magazines through a program of awards, matching grants, and organizational help. Director of literary programs Courtney Hodell says in the announcement, “When literary magazines suffer, literature feels it, and when they thrive, so do writers and readers. We hope to bring more attention to their great work, and help them reach their ambitions.” The foundation says it hopes the multi-year support offered will “ignite growth.” They note, “What distinguishes this prize is the call to action built into its design: winning magazines will be encouraged to strive for […]
People, Etc.
Shannon Jamieson Vazquez has joined Crooked Lane as senior acquisition editor. She continues to run SJV Editorial, and was previously an editor at Berkley. At Random House Children’s, Nancee Adams has joined as copy editor. She was previously was a freelance copy editor and proofreader. Bess Schelper has joined as associate copy editor. She was previously a website managing editor and social media editor, and worked on the Penguin Random House corporate metadata cleanup project. Miriam Miller has joined Holiday House Publishing in the newly created position of senior subsidiary rights manager, reporting to vp of rights, permissions and digital publishing […]
Kirkus Prize Nominees, FT Shortlist
The Kirkus Prize announced their award candidates in fiction, nonfiction, and children’s literature. The winners will be announced in a ceremony on November 2. In fiction, they nominate one Booker candidate (Hamid) and two NBA longlisted-authors (Machado and Ward). The only other point of overlap is children’s nominee Angie Thomas, also on the NBA longlist. The complete nominees: Fiction What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky, by Lesley Nneka Arimah (Riverhead) Exit West, by Mohsin Hamid (Riverhead) White Tears, by Hari Kunzru (Knopf) The Ninth Hour, by Alice McDermott (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) Her Body and Other Parties, […]