Jennifer Klonsky will join Putnam Children’s as vice president and publisher starting January 2, reporting to Jen Loja, filling the position vacated when Jennifer Besser moved to Macmillan Children’s earlier this fall. Klonsky has been editorial director at Harper Children’s. Jen Loja said in the announcement, I’m sure that her mix of publishing savvy and a terrific nose for great reads will be a perfect addition to Putnam and we look forward to many years of successful book making with her and her team here.” At Algonquin Books, Debra Linn has been promoted to director of digital marketing, while both […]
Archives for November 2017
People, Etc.
Molly Ker Hawn has been appointed director of the Bent Agency UK. In Germany, Constanze Neumann takes over at Aufbau and the imprint Blumenbar as editor-in-chief for literary fiction on December, replacing Gunnar Cynybulk. She was editor-in-chief at Hoffmann & Campe until 2016, and has been working as a literary agent. At Catapult, Morgan Jerkins has been promoted to associate editor of the magazine, while Megha Majumdar moves up to associate editor for the magazine and books. It was early August when we reported that Donna Tartt had left longtime agent Amanda Urban at ICM for representation in the US and […]
Sandell Proposes Desperate-Sounding Plan to Take Barnes & Noble Private with Borrowed Funds
Small-time investor Sandell Capital Management got exactly nowhere with their summer campaign to goad Barnes & Noble into selling itself to a nonexistent buyer for a pricetag not offered by anyone of $900 million. So now they have reformulated the plan into a “proposed transaction” that would have the company taken private at a lower value — $650 million or so — by using crushing leverage from a not-yet-existing lender and the participation of an unwilling Len Riggio and other shareholders. The plan, as described in the WSJ on Thursday afternoon, calls for raising a big $500 million in debt […]
Briefs: Awards, And More
Awards The UK’s Goldsmiths prize for fiction “that breaks the mould or extends the possibilities of the novel” has gone to Nicola Barker for novel H(a)ppy (Heinemann). Retailer WH Smith picked Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman as their fiction book of the year, with The Little Big Things by Henry Fraser as their nonfiction book of the year. Canada’s Writers’ Trust literary awards were presented, with winners including Brother by David Chariandy for fiction, and Life on the Ground Floor: Letters from the Edge of Emergency Medicine by James Maskalyk for nonfiction. The Jewish Book Council’s Natan Book Award, a […]
National Book Awards: Ward Repeats As Fiction Winner, Gessen, Bidart, Benway, and More
At the National Book Awards on Wednesday evening, 15 of 20 finalists were women and three of the four awards went to women as well. The fiction prize went to Sing, Unburied, Sing (Scribner) by Jesmyn Ward, who won also won in 2011 for Salvage the Bones. In her speech, Ward said, “You looked at my poor, my black, my southern women, and you saw yourself. I am deeply honored to each and every one of you who looks at my work and sees something in it.” Masha Gessen’s The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia (Riverhead) was awarded the nonfiction prize. She opened her […]
People, Etc.
Putnam executive vice president, associate publisher and editor-in-chief Neil Nyren will retire at the end of the year after more than 33 years with the imprint. Putnam, Dutton, and Berkley President Ivan Held noted Nyren has been “a beloved presence in the mystery and thriller communities” and the most recent winner of theMystery Writers of America’s Ellery Queen Award. (Nyren’s plans include projects with MWA as well as “other initiatives within the crime fiction community.”) Held continued: “In addition to losing his presence as a lifelong representative of Red Sox Nation, we will miss his encyclopedic knowledge of pop culture, art, […]