Edmund White will receive the National Book Foundation’s 2019 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Filmmaker John Waters will present the award at the National Book Awards ceremony on November 20.White’s best known work include A Boy’s Own Story and The Beautiful Room. NBF executive director Lisa Lucas said in a statement. “It’s only when you’re able to look back at a body of work that one is able to see a career like Edmund White’s for what it is: revolutionary and vital, making legible for scores of readers the people, moments and history that would come to define not only queer lives, but also the broader trajectory of American culture.”
Courtney Burke has been promoted to editor at Page Street Kids.
At Little Simon and Simon Spotlight, and Leslie Mechanic has joined as associate art director. She was most recently designer at Penguin Random House. Kayla Wasil has joined as associate art director for Little Simon and Simon Spotlight. She was most recently assistant art director at Penguin Workshop.
Matthew Gildea has joined Arcadia in the new position of business development manager. He was most recently book team business director at Joseph-Beth Booksellers.
Connor Goldsmith has been promoted to senior agent at Fuse Literary.
Chelsea Eberly will join Greenhouse Literary Agency as agent on September 30. She is currently senior editor at Random House Children’s Books.
Scholarly publishing technology provider HighWire has hired Steve Rutberg as sales director. Most recently he was sales and marketing director at Firebrand Technologies.
Katie Seaman will join HQ as commissioning editor for fiction on October 7. She was previously editor at Ebury.
Deputy chief executive Emma House is leaving the UK’s Publisher Association after 10 years with the organization.
Imprints
Margaret Anastas will join Viking Children’s next month, where she will launch an imprint publishing commercial picture books and picture-book franchises, repoting to Ken Wright. She has been an editorial director at Harper Children’s for 17 years.
Wright says in the announcement, “Margaret has a unique understanding of what very young children are truly drawn to in storytelling, and her career in picture book-making has reflected that, book after book.”
Initiatives
Penguin Random House has resumed its annual “2-Day transit program” for independent booksellers a month earlier this year, the eighth for the program, running through March 2, 2019.