Roz Parr will step down from her position as marketing director, Vintage Anchor and Everyman’s Library on June 1 after 18 years in that role, with plans to leave the industry to pursue personal and family priorities.Vintage Anchor publisher Anne Messitte writes, “Roz has had an incredible thirty-eight-year tenure in our industry, bringing invaluable real-world bookselling experience to Vintage, and we will be very sad to see her leave the publishing group…. Her work at Vintage has been essential and exceptional. Whether helping editors nuance their pitches for books, positioning a new season of titles with the reps, or cultivating real-time sales opportunities for the nearly 6,000 titles on our paperback and ebook backlist, Roz has always been committed to the highest standards and the best results.” Laura Crisp, currently director of digital publishing and business development, will expand her responsibilities to fill the new role of senior director, sales marketing and business development, Vintage Anchor.
At Chronicle Books, Rachel Harrell has joined as designer of food and lifestyle; previously she was a design intern at IDEO. Alice Robertson has joined as sales manager in the specialty department; previously she was a sales representative at Keena. Magnolia Molcan has joined as managing editor of food and lifestyle; previously she was a managing editor at SFMOMA.
Brad Steiger, 82, bestselling author of paranormal topics with 17 million copies of his books in print worldwide, died on May 6.
Awards
Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich‘s The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir won the Chautauqua Prize.
Harassment Files
Shannon Hale and others including thriller writer Brendan Reichs, fantasy author Jessica Day George, and young adult authors Dan Wells and Gwenda Bond have withdrawn from this year’s FanX Salt Lake Comic Convention, following a complaint about inappropriate conduct by author Richard Paul Evans and an ensuing revision of the event’s harassment policy. Despite the change in policy, convention co-founder Bryan Brandenburg had also written on Facebook defending what he “describes as a fun environment of touch,” the Salt Lake Tribune noted, “changing the subject to touch explicitly requested by fans.”
Hale had complained that the new policy minimized women’s experiences of harassment, to which Brandenburg responded in part: “Maybe it is best that you sit this one out and then wait to hear how it went. I don’t think there is anything we can say to convince you to come and quite frankly I’m not willing to try. I know in my heart that we take this seriously and I don’t think you get it.” The official FanX Twitter account then posted an image of Hale’s email, revealing her email address.
Hale told the Salt Lake Tribune: “When a woman talks to them privately about concerns about sexual harassment, their response is to publicly harass and doxx her.” Brandenburg did apologize for his handling of the situation, writing on Facebook on Monday: “I made multiple mistakes in handling the report of harassment at our event. I was insensitive to people that were communicating to me about this issue.”
Distribution
Longleaf Services will take on the University of Oklahoma Press as a fulfillment and publishing services client starting October 1.