Tara Parsons will join the Harper One Group on October 29 in the new role of associate publisher for Amistad, Harper Español, and the international fiction program, for which she will also acquire, reporting to Judith Curr. She has been editor-in-chief at Touchstone (where she reported to the soon-retiring Susan Moldow).
M’Bilia Meekers joins the University of Washington Press team as publicity manager on Monday. She was publicist and copywriter at LSU Press. Also starting next week is Julie Fergus, exhibits and direct marketing manager. She was most recently associate marketing manager at Routledge, managing a list of social sciences textbooks.
Hayley Kamin joins the American Psychological Association’s publications team as content development manager for APA Style.
Prolific translator Anthea Bell, 82, who brought hundreds of works ranging from Asterix to WG Sebald to an English readership, has died. She translated works in both French and German, by authors including Sebald, Stefan Zweig, Franz Kafka and Sigmund Freud. She started translating Asterix in 1969, “coming up with some of its best jokes and puns” according to the Guardian. “In her version, Obelix’s small dog Idéfix became Dogmatix, and the druid Panoramix became Getafix.”
Closing
Llewellyn’s Midnight Ink imprint will close after the spring/summer 2019 season.
Profiled
Kathy Hourigan, vice president, managing editor of Knopf Doubleday, was profiled in the NYT on her 55th anniversary with the publisher. Hourigan started as a secretary in 1963, and has since become, staffers say “a walking institutional history of Knopf.” Knopf editor in chief and chairman, Sonny Mehta says, “What sets her apart is her ability to keep a dysfunctional editorial team on task every day. And as far as I can tell she achieves this by hovering. Indeed, Kathy hovers outside my office when I’m late. I used to shut the door hoping that would help, but her hovering is so fierce that it penetrates the walls.” Victoria Wilson calls her “a lovable reckoning.” Hourigan herself characterizes her job as, “nag, nag, nag.”
She has worked on all of Robert Caro’s books since The Power Broker (1974) needed to be cut by 350,000 words and “tempers flared” between Caro and editor Robert Gottlieb. She was brought in to “possibly defuse the tension, and made judicious edit suggestions.” Caro says that, “in Knopf and in Kathy, I feel that image I had of what publishing ought to be has been preserved.”
Bookselling
At a press conference at City Hall on Wednesday promoting the Small Business Jobs Survival Act, bookseller Sarah McNally said that the landlord for her bookstore on Soho’s Prince Street — which will close and relocate at the end of June 2019 — wanted to raise her rent from $350,000 a year to $850,000 a year, reported by Politico’s Rosa Goldensohn on Twitter. The legislation would establish requirements for lease renewal terms. McNally noted, “It would’ve helped to have the non-binding arbitration and mediation.”
The city of San Francisco, in partnership with the nonprofit Working Solutions and the Small Business Development Center, gave 11 independent bookstores at total of $103,000 in grants. The Bookstore SF Program, dubbed “a pet project of the late Mayor Ed Lee,” aims to revitalize indies as community center, and also provides municipal services “including technical assistance on marketing, human resource consulting, and help negotiating long-term leases.”
