Katie Ziga will move over from her position as svp, executive director, business operations at what was the Crown Publishing Group to serve as svp, strategy and finance at the Penguin Publishing Group, reporting to Allison Dobson, in January. VP, business management Tina McCormick and director, strategy and finance Liz Ichniowski will report to Ziga. She has worked for Random House since 1998.
Fareeda Bullert has been promoted to senior marketing manager at Berkley.
At Sourcebooks, Mallory Hyde has joined as marketing specialist for children’s books. Jaclyn Puccini has joined in the newly created role of social media specialist for Sourcebooks Fire.
Liz Gately is now scouting for Tchelet in Israel.
Forthcoming
John Le Carre‘s next book AGENT RUNNING IN THE FIELD will be published by Viking on October 22, 2019 in the US, and October 17 in the UK. The publisher said the book will center on a 26-year-old “solitary figure” and is set in present day London, writing that it “confronts the division and rage at the heart of our modern world.”
Awards
The National Book Critics Circle announced the finalists for the John Leonard Award for Best First Book. Among the nominees is Nana Kwami Adjei-Brenyah’s Friday Black, which is available to sample now in our Buzz Books 2018 Fall/Winter. The rest of the list:
A Lucky Man, by Jamal Brinkley (Graywolf Press)
The Line Becomes A River, by Francisco Cantu (Riverhead)
Asymmetry, by Lisa Halliday (Simon & Schuster)
The Incendiaries, by R.O. Kwon (Riverhead)
There There, by Tommy Orange (Knopf)
Educated, by Tara Westover (Random House)
Bookselling
Cincinnati children’s bookstore Blue Manatee is for sale, and if the owners cannot find a buyer they will close on January 14. Co-owner John Hutton wrote that he and Sandra Gross “will consider all proposals, but our primary criteria are that this someone – or team of someones – will carry on the tradition of providing the best in children’s books and related activities/gift items, quality programming and author events, and championing values of tolerance, community, imagination, and a smackerel of insurgency.” The store has been in operation for 17 years.