Mauro DiPreta will join the William Morrow group on March 4 as svp, executive editor, reporting to Liate Stehlik. He previously worked at HarperCollins for 16 years until 2011, and mostly recently was founder, vp and publisher of Hachette Books.
Katya Shannon is stepping down this spring as vice president, special markets, Penguin Random House. She has been with the company since joining Putnam in 1980 as a field sales rep. Amanda Close will oversee special markets starting in May, in addition to her current role leading strategic market development.
Hillary Brady has joined DK as digital marketing manager. She was previously digital content specialist at Smithsonian Institution, National Air and Space Museum.
Philip Himberg will join The MacDowell Colony as executive director, succeeding Cheryl Young. He was previously artistic director for Sundance Institute’s Theatre Program.
Katy Hershberger has joined School Library Journal as senior editor, YA, succeeding Shelley Diaz. Hershberger has previously worked for St. Martin’s, Bloomsbury, and Simon & Schuster
Bookselling
Loyalty Bookstore in Washington D.C., formerly Upshur Street Books, reopened this past weekend under new ownership. Now owned by Hannah Oliver Depp, the renovated space features expanded children’s sections as well as a focus on diverse fiction and nonfiction.
Awards
Los Angeles Times Book Prizes announced finalists in ten categories on Wednesday, with winners to be named on April 2. Additionally, Terry Tempest Williams won the Robert Kirsch Award, “a lifetime achievement prize given to a writer with a substantial connection to the American West”; nonprofit publisher Library of America won the Innovator’s Award; and Kiese Laymon will receive the Christopher Isherwood Prize for autobiographical prose. Among the rest of the nominees are:
Fiction
Esi Edugyan, Washington Black
Abby Geni, The Wildlands
Tayari Jones, An American Marriage
Rebecca Makkai, The Great Believers
Michael Ondaatje, Warlight
First Fiction
Katya Apekina, The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish
Lisa Halliday, Asymmetry
R.O. Kwon, The Incendiaries
Tommy Orange, There There
Nafissa Thompson-Spires, Heads of the Colored People
Current Interest
Francisco Cantú, The Line Becomes a River
John Carreyrou, Bad Blood
Michael Lewis, The Fifth Risk
Michelle Obama, Becoming
Susan Orlean, The Library Book
Biography
David W. Blight, Frederick Douglass
Seymour M. Hersh, Reporter
Victoria Johnson, American Eden
Bob Spitz, Reagan
Tara Westover, Educated