At Harper Collins, Catherine Barbosa Ross has been promoted to director, foreign rights, and Maureen Cole has been promoted to director of publicity for the Morrow Group.
Hachette UK’s Lucy Hale has been promoted to the newly created role of deputy ceo for Hodder & Stoughton, Headline, John Murray Press, and Quercus. Group ceo Jamie Hodder-Williams said, “She has a first-class commercial brain and a forensic knowledge of our markets at home and abroad. Working closely with our authors, she has demonstrated time and again that her peerless vision, her energy, dedication and enthusiasm in delivering campaigns ensures that every book reaches its full potential, often turning a great book into a great bestseller.” Additionally, Hachette UK will consolidate its sales departments into one group, to be led by Rob Manser in the newly created role of group sales director starting November 1.
Former Grub Hub executive and former chief operating officer at PlayFab Beth Birnbaum has joined Wiley’s board of directors.
At PFD, Tessa David has been promoted to agent.
Alison Shay has been appointed publicist at UNC Press. She was previously acquisitions editor at Syracuse University Press.
Forthcoming
Elizabeth Gilbert‘s new novel CITY OF GIRLS will be published by Riverhead on June 4, 2019, “a unique love story set in the New York City theater world during the 1940s” that “centers around a young woman discovering that you don’t have to be a good girl to be a good person.” (In concert, Bloomsbury UK continues with simultaneous publication as Gilbert’s UK publisher.)
New Imprints
Publishing veteran Richard Charkin is launching a new business, Mensch Publishing, which “has no mission statement and no stated editorial strategy.” Rather, “Its aim is simply to help authors reach readers with minimal intervention and maximum impact and to reward them proportionately.” Bloomsbury will handle sales, rights and distribution handled by Bloomsbury, with Ruth Killick as publicist, Phillip Beresford as designer, Peter Gill as copyeditor, and Adrian Downie as web designer. Their first title is Guy Kennaway’s TIME TO GO, for publication in February 2019, “a darkly funny memoir about assisted dying.”
Bookselling
Barnes & Noble opens another new store Wednesday, a 17,400-square-foot space in the new Mellody Farm retail development in Vernon Hills, IL, north of Chicago. The design is similar to the store opened in Columbia, MD last month. The company is due to open two more new stores in November, in Hackensack, NJ and Staten Island, NY.
Awards
Finalists were announced for Canada’s Governor General’s Awards in multiple categories, with winners to be named October 30. The English fiction nominees have little overlap with the two other big Canadian awards; only Rawi Hage’s novel from the Giller shortlist is nominated here as well:
Zolitude, Paige Cooper
Beirut Hellfire Society, Rawi Hage
The Red Word, Sarah Henstra
Women Talking, Miriam Toews
Jonny Appleseed, Joshua Whitehead
Still More Picks
Scribe by Alyson Hagy is Belletrist‘s October book, and Books Are Magic is their indie bookstore of the month.