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People, Etc.

March 6, 2020
By Erin Somers

At Bloomsbury Children’s, Mary Kate Castellani has been promoted to editorial director; Melissa Kavonic to managing editorial director; Kate Sederstrom to assistant editor; Beth Eller to senior director of school and library marketing and domestic sub rights; Phoebe Dyer to marketing associate; and Jeanette Levy to assistant art director.

Stephen Isaacs joined the McGraw-Hill Business team as a senior editor.

Kendra Newton has been promoted to senior marketing director for Dey Street Books.

Raffaella de Angelis joined producer and distributor Fremantle this week, working on literary acquisitions for their global drama division, as well as for production companies The Apartment (part of Fremantle) and Passenger Pictures (which has a multi-year deal with Fremantle). Based in London, she reports to Christian Vesper, Fremantle evp creative director, global drama. She was most recently international literary agent and partner at WME.

Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA) assistant executive director Linda-Marie Barrett has been selected to take over as executive director, on June 16, when Wanda Jewell retires.

At Bonnier Books UK, Francesca Russell has been promoted to publicity director across its adult trade business. Karen Stretch has been promoted to the newly created role of campaigns director.

One Boat is the name of Pan Macmillan’s new sustainability imprint, run by Bluebird publisher Carole Tonkinson, launching in December 2020.

Welbeck Publishing announced that Two Rivers will take over their distribution in the US as of July 1.

Legal
A surprise wrinkle for Barnes & Noble as it pursues summary judgement against former CEO Demos Parneros on two of three claims: Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil, newly assigned to the case in February, has an individual rule that in non-jury trials — which this will be if the parties fail to settle, as laid out in Parneros’ employment contract — her court does not offer a summary judgment practice, “absent good cause.” Yesterday lawyers for both parties filed letters to the court; BN’s to argue good cause in their motion for summary judgment on the defamation and breach of covenant claims, and Parneros’ to emphasize that the motion was faulty in the first place.

Awards
Jonathan Escoffery won the Paris Review‘s Plimpton Prize for Fiction for his story Under the Ackee Tree, from the summer 2019 issue. Leigh Newman won the Terry Southern Prize for “humor, wit, and sprezzatura” for her story Howl Palace from the fall 2019 issue. Both prizes will be presented at the Spring Revel on April 7.

Still On…But Some Refunds Are Available
We have heard from people nervous that the Bologna Book Fair, postponed to early May, will still wind up being cancelled given the spread of COVID-19 across Italy, where schools have been closed across the country through March 15. For now the fair’s answer to those concerns is a cheerful Twitter post this morning: “#BCBF20 is ready to happen again! While we’re rescheduling our events calendar to make it better and better, at this page you may find the most updated news to help you reschedule your visit to Bologna.”

After previously declining to give refunds to ticketholders, the organizers have changed their policy: “We are happy to inform you that – given the exceptional circumstances and in consideration of the urgent provisions taken by the public authorities and applicable to the Italian Region of Emilia-Romagna as a result of the public health emergency caused by the spread of the COVID-2019 virus – should you be unable to attend the trade show on the new dates, BolognaFiere is willing to reimburse the price of the ticket, minus the handling fee indicated on your purchase receipt.”

Please Stay Tuned
While there are some provocative write-ups already of Oprah Winfrey‘s first episode of her book club discussion of AMERICAN DIRT and the controversy it inspired, we wanted to watch the whole episode ourselves and report on it directly. But it crashed this morning and disappeared from the episode queue for a period of time Representatives from Oprah’s company told us, “Apple is working to resolve.” Right before sending the mail this morning, they updated us: “The episode is back up. There was a technical issue with the platform but now it’s restored.”

Filed Under: Book Fairs, Free, Legal, Personnel

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