Dan Vidra has joined HarperCollins as associate director on the international sales team, managing US division sales in the open market. He replaces Alison Smith, who took over closed market sales. Vidra had a long career in international book sales, and worked for txtr and its various successor companies for the past six years.
Julia Kardon has joined Hannigan Salky Getzler Agency as an agent, where she will focus on literary fiction and narrative nonfiction. She was previously an agent at Mary Evans.
William LoTurco has launched LoTurco Literary, a literary agency focused on nonfiction. He was previously an agent at Aevitas Creative Management.
Margaret Halton joined PEW Literary, overseeing foreign rights. She was at United Agents.
Rachel Hecht Children’s Scouting has been appointed children’s & YA scout for DeA Planeta in Italy.
Lizzie Lewandowski has joined Sourcebooks as events marketing specialist.
Former publishing executive Jon Rosenberg (who had been executive director of global licensed publishing at MGM until 2007) will serve as evp of publishing, overseeing books and merchandising, for start-up Curiosity Ink Media. Longtime Nickelodeon executive Russell Hicks is president and chief creative officer. The company “plans to venture into TV animation and live-action programs, VR, publishing, and live event production starting in early 2019.”
Harassment Files
Jean-Claude Arnault — the man who brought down the Nobel Prize for literature — was formally charged with two counts of rape from 2011, with Swedish prosecutor Christina Voigt saying the evidence “is robust and sufficient for prosecution.” Arnault ran a cultural center in Stockholm and is is married Swedish Academy member Katarina Frostenson. Accusations against him by 18 women were first reported by newspaper Dagens Nyheter in November, and Arnault is also accused of having leaked the winners’ of the literature prize seven times.
Awards
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie won the PEN Pinter Prize. Chair of judges and chair of trustees for English PEN Maureen Freely said: “In this age of the privatised, marketised self, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is the exception who defies the rule. In her gorgeous fictions, but just as much in her TED talks and essays, she refuses to be deterred or detained by the categories of others. Sophisticated beyond measure in her understanding of gender, race, and global inequality, she guides us through the revolving doors of identity politics, liberating us all.”
Bookselling
Miami’s Bookstore in the Grove has reopened in a new location with a new name — now called bookstore & kitchen. The Miami Herald writes, “At first glance, bookstore & kitchen seems more kitchen than book store. But walk behind the cafe, and you’ll find the books in a bright, small space.” The new store is “ironically across and just down the street from the new Books & Books location at 3409 Main Highway.” That new two-story Books & Books in Coconut Grove had a “soft opening” on Saturday.