Ebury deputy publisher Joel Rickett will take over as managing director on January 1, and Andrew Goodfellow will move up to publisher.
Mary Gannon will become executive director of the Community of Literary Presses and Magazines on November 5. Gannon has been the associate director and director of content for the Academy of American Poets since 2013.
Erin Galloway has been promoted to deputy publicity director for Berkley, and Tara O’Connor has moved up to associate publicist.
Harassment Files
Garrison Keillor‘s scheduled appearance at the Burlington Book Festival in Vermont has caused a controversy, with critics online calling his inclusion “tone deaf.” Minnesota Public Radio fired Keillor last November over allegations of inappropriate conduct, including, according to MPR ceo Jon McTaggart, “dozens of sexually inappropriate incidents.”
Keillor wrote in a Facebook post, “I agreed to come to Burlington to raise money for the Festival, but if it troubles people, then I’m glad to stay home and do my hoop-stitching.” In the same post, he gave a new account trivializing the events that led to his firing, which differed significantly from his previous story about touching “a woman’s bare back.” He wrote: “I was fired by Minnesota Public Radio for a mutual email flirtation with a freelance writer. She wrote suggestive emails to me, I wrote back. She stopped, I stopped. She worked for the show right through my retirement in June, 2016, and then, a year and a half later, a male employee threatened MPR with bad publicity if they didn’t pay him $250,000. She joined him in a suit, demanding $750,000.”
Festival organizer Rick Kisonak also responded on Facebook by saying: “I have never invited a sexual predator to the Burlington Book Festival and never would. I don’t condone the inappropriate treatment of women.” He added that his only interests were “in providing Garrison Keillor’s fans with the opportunity to see him” and “opening the channel for a conversation with the potential to illuminate, investigate and possibly even heal.”
Distribution
Lerner Publishing Group will distribute Creston Books starting January 1, 2019.