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People, Etc.

April 7, 2020
By Erin Somers

Andrea DeWerd has joined Houghton Mifflin Harcourt as senior marketing director, overseeing general interest, lifestyle, and culinary titles. She was most recently as senior director of marketing for Random House Christian and Crown Forum.

James Akinaka has been promoted to digital marketing coordinator at Penguin Children’s.

Selihah White has joined Melville House as a publicist. White was publicity assistant at Penguin Press.

PEN America president Jennifer Egan discusses her own experience with a suspected case of coronavirus and how the pandemic is affecting writers on the organization’s podcast.

Picks
Oprah Winfrey chose Hidden Valley Road by Robert Kolker (out today from Doubleday) as her next book club pick. She said, “This is a riveting true story of an American family that reads like a medical detective journey. It reveals the shame, denial, shock, confusion and misunderstanding of mental illness at a time when no one was really sure what schizophrenia was or how to treat it.”

Winfrey told the AP she considered delaying book club selections in light of COVID-19, but ultimately decided “that books, and conversations about books, were needed more than ever.” In addition to her usual program on Apple, Winfrey plans to hold “literary pajama parties” on Instagram to celebrate the book. She said, “You have virtual dance parties. So I was thinking of doing the same thing for books, trying to see how many people you get for a pajama party where you talk about a book.”

Elsewhere, Barnes & Noble named Conjure Women by Afia Atakora as its April Book Club pick.

Awards
Chloe Aridjis’ Sea Monsters (Catapult) won the 2020 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.
The Dylan Thomas Prize named its shortlist, with winners to be announced in a virtual ceremony on May 14:
Surge, by Jay Bernard (Chatto & Windus)
Flèche, by Mary Jean Chan (Faber & Faber)
Inland, by Téa Obreht (Random House/Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
If All the World and Love Were Young, by Stephen Sexton (Penguin UK)
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, by Ocean Vuong (Penguin Press/Jonathan Cape)
Lot, by Bryan Washington (Riverhead, Atlantic Books)

Virtual Events
Book Con has organized an online Read-a-Thon for Saturday, April 11, featuring over 30 authors and aiming to raise funds for the Book Industry Charitable Foundation (BINC). In related news, Ingram Content Group is the latest large company to announce they will not attend this year’s Book Expo and Book Con. Beyond the fundraising, if Reed Exhibitions really wants to help, it’s time to cancel this year’s shows outright and refund in full any funds paid towards those events, so that booksellers and businesses can focus on what’s essential.

Distribution
IPG started distributing for the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists on April 1. IPG’s Academic and Professional program started distributing for Demeter Press and the Water Environment Federation on April 1 and May 1, respectively.

Filed Under: Awards, Distribution, Free, Personnel

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