Lili Feinberg has joined Simon & Schuster Children’s as associate publicist. She was most recently publicity assistant at Tor/Forge.
Rebecca Strobel has been promoted to assistant editor at Touchstone.
There’s another change in the executive ranks at CBS: longtime head of corporate communications Gil Schwartz (aka author Stanley Bing) will retire on November 1 after more than 20 years with the company. He wrote in a memo: “As fans of arcane SEC filings have noted, I had the option of stepping away early this past summer, but given the exigencies of corporate life at that juncture, I elected to stay in place for a while. Now seems like a much more appropriate time to move on. The corporation is establishing a new direction, full of hope and promise. And I still have a lot of writing to do, in an atmosphere of perhaps some greater serenity.”
Forthcoming
The staff of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert’s WHOSE BOAT IS THIS BOAT? Comments That Don’t Help in the Aftermath of a Hurricane, will be published by Simon & Schuster on November 6. It’s a picture book comprising quotations from President Donald Trump in the wake of Hurricane Florence (such as, “At least you got a nice boat out of the deal,” and “Have a good time!”). They call it “the first children’s book ever published that demonstrates what not to say after a natural disaster.” All of the show’s proceeds will be donated to The Foundation for the Carolinas, The One SC Fund, The North Carolina Disaster Relief Fund and World Central Kitchen.
Awards
The Children’s Book Council Diversity Committee announced the winners of the inaugural CBC Diversity Outstanding Achievement Awards, recognizing children’s publishing professionals and organizations who have made an impact on the publishing of diverse books:
Saraciea J. Fennell, publicist at Tor, founder of the Bronx Book Festival and The Bronx Is Reading
Jennifer Loja, president and publisher of Penguin Children’s
Jason Low, publisher at Lee & Low Books
Beth Phelan, agent at Gallt & Zacker Literary, creator of online pitching event #DVPit
Phoebe Yeh, vp and publisher at Crown Children’s
We Need Diverse Books, grassroots organization confronting the lack of diversity in children’s publishing, led by founder Ellen Oh and COO Dhonielle Clayton
The National Book Foundation named the books they’ll feature in the first year of their Literature for Justice program, five “contemporary titles that shed light on mass incarceration in the United States.” The program will include “large-scale public events featuring authors and experts on mass incarceration,” and more. The list:
A Place to Stand, by Jimmy Santiago Baca
Shahid Reads His Own Palm, by Reginald Dwayne Betts
Upstate, by Kalisha Buckhanon
Understanding Mass Incarceration, by James Kilgore
Inside This Place, Not of It, edited by Ayelet Waldman and Robin Levi
In the UK, the Women’s Prize has added a £1,000 fee for the publisher of each title that makes the 16-book longlist, in addition to the existing £5,000 fee charged for the six shortlisted novels. In a letter to publishers, chair of the Women’s Prize for Fiction board Jo Prior explained that the organization has “applied to become a charity, and have changed our name: we are now the Women’s Prize Trust.” Sponsors such as Baileys and Orange had previously funded the prize..
Galley Beggar Press, the publisher of Eimear McBride’s A Girl is A Half-Formed Thing which won the prize in 2014, criticized the new fee on Twitter, calling it “catastrophic for small publishers,” adding, “our author won this prize a few years ago when we were even smaller. It would have been near impossible for us to enter with these rules.” Prize founder Kate Mosse said they still want “as wide a range of publishers as possible” to enter, and she encourages “any publisher who feels there is any sort of issue for them to be in touch immediately.”