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September 3, 2019By Erin Somers

People: Booker Shortlist, and More

September 3, 2019By Erin Somers

Kara Watson has been promoted to senior editor/marketing liaison at Scribner.

Sara DeLozier has joined Viking/Penguin as publicist. She was most recently publicity coordinator at Picador.

Executive director of the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance Wanda Jewell will next June, after 30 years of leading the organization.

In the UK, Anne Meadows has been promoted to editorial director at Granta.

Jenny Fry has been promoted to commercial director at Canongate, adding responsibility for sales.

Elise Burns will move to Bonnier Books UK in mid-November as trade sales and export director, reporting to Perminder Mann. She is currently UK sales director at Bloomsbury UK, and fills the position vacated by James Horobin in May.

Mark Searle will join DK in the UK as publishing director, licensing on November 4, reporting to Rebecca Smart. He has been publisher at Quarto’s Bright Press. He fills the position vacated by Simon Beecroft, who left DK in May.

Carolyn Thorne is leaving Harper UK to join Hodder’s Yellow Kite as editorial director.

Sophie Nicolet will join Hachette Livre as senior vice president, corporate communications, on November 1, succeeding Ronald Blunden, svp for corporate communications and sustainable growth, who is retiring. Nicolet will also become a member of the company’s international executive board and French executive board. Gaëtan Ruffault, senior vice president, human resources France, will lead environmental policy following Blunden’s departure.

Daniela Schlingmann Literary Scouting will scout for Left Bank Pictures and Rabén & Sjögren and B. Wahlströms in the UK. Sofia Smith-Laing has been promoted to scouting executive.

Dover Publications editor John Grafton has retired after 51 years with the company.

Awards
The Booker Prize announced its shortlist, which includes two former winners (Margaret Atwood and Salman Rushdie), and one former finalist (Chigozie Obioma). 

The Testaments (Knopf/Chatto & Windus), by Margaret Atwood 
Ducks, Newburyport (Biblioasis/Galley Beggar Press), by Lucy Ellmann 
Girl, Woman, Other
(Grove/Hamish Hamilton), by Bernardine Evaristo 
An Orchestra of Minorities (Little, Brown), by Chigozie Obioma 
Quichotte (Random House, Jonathan Cape), by Salman Rushdie 
10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World
(Viking), by Elif Shafak

Atwood also tops the longlist from Canada’s Giller Prize (with the shortlist to be named September 30):

Days by Moonlight, by André Alexis (Coach House)
The Testaments, by Margaret Atwood (McClelland & Stewart)
Immigrant City, by David Bezmozgis (Harper Canada)
Greenwood, by Michael Christie (McClelland & Stewart)
Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club, by Megan Gail Coles (House of Anansi)
The Innocents, by Michael Crummey (Doubleday Canada)
Dream Sequence, by Adam Foulds (Biblioasis)
Late Breaking, by K.D. Miller (Biblioasis)
Dual Citizens, by Alix Ohlin (House of Anansi)
Lampedusa, by Steven Price (McClelland & Stewart)
Frying Plantain, by Zalika Reid-Benta (House of Anansi)
Reproduction, by Ian Williams (Random House Canada)

Imprints
Germany’s Voland & Quist is launching a new imprint V&Q Books, to be distributed in England and Ireland. V&Q Books will publish five to six titles a year, beginning in September 2020, with an emphasis on “commercial, literary fiction and narrative non-fiction showcasing remarkable writing from Germany.” 

Bookselling
Bestselling author Jenny Lawson announced on Twitter that she has signed a lease for her planned Nowhere Bookshop in San Antonio, a bookstore and bar.

 

Filed Under: Awards, Free, Personnel

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