Zachary Schisgal has joined Wiley as senior acquisitions editor.
Florian Illies will become publisher of Rowohlt in Germany as of January 1, 2019, succeeding Barbara Laugwitz. Illies is the author of Generation Golf and 1913, and is currently the managing director of the auction house Grisebach.
Picks
The September Pennie’s Pick at Costco is The Dinner List by Rebecca Serle, which is excerpted in our Buzz Books 2018 Fall/Winter sampler and available for download now.
And the month’s PBS NewsHour-New York Times Now Read This pick is Robert Kaplan’s Earning the Rockies.
Awards
The Academy of American Poets named Sonia Sanchez as the winner of the $100,000 Wallace Stevens Award, a lifetime achievement prize.
Harassment Files
Author Ron Carlson resigned from the creative writing program at UC Irvine following accusations of sexual misconduct. A report from the Hotchkiss School, a boarding school in Lakeville, CT, released on August 17 alleged that Carlson sexually assaulted a student when he was a teacher and “dorm parent” there in the 1970s. Michael Szalay, chairman of the English department at UC Irvine told the Los Angeles Times that, “He had been mulling this course of action for some time, and the decision was his, and his alone.” Both UC Irvine and Arizona State University, where Carlson previously taught, stated there were no reports of similar conduct on his record. Carlson is the author of several novels, collections of short stories, and other works, including The Signal and Five Skies.
New Ventures
Longtime New York Review of Books staffer and then contributing editor Ann Kjellberg (who is also executor of the Joseph Brodsky Estate) has started a digital book review service, Book Post. The publication will deliver two book reviews a week by email newsletter to paid subscribers, starting in September.
Film producer Uri Singer (Marjorie Prime) and former Apple executive when then spent 11 months at Netflix George Berry have started TaleFlick. It is designed to make available curated literary material to film producers and/or to charge self-published authors $88 a year per manuscript in pursuit of same. (They also “charge studios, producers and production companies for our recommended titles as well as a back-end fee when movies and shows are made.”)