Kent Watson is stepping down from his role as executive director of PubWest on June 12 after 12 years in the position. The board has begun the search for an interim executive director.
Imprints
China’s Thinkingdom Media Group has formed Astra Publishing House, a publishing group that will combine their Boyd Mills & Kane and mineditionUS (in which Boyd Mills recently made “a substantial investment”) with a new adult imprint, Astra House. Distributed by Penguin Random House, Astra House will publish 20 to 25 titles a year — about half of those books works in translation — across literary fiction, poetry, and nonfiction
Former Holt president and publisher Ben Schrank will lead Astra House as publisher, and serve as coo of the larger Astra Publisher House. Alessandra Bastagli joins as editorial director; she was most recently executive editor at Dey Street Books. Maria Russo joins mineditionUS as editorial director. She was previously children’s books editor at the New York Times. Juliana Lauletta continues as publisher of Boyds Mills & Kane. Leying Jiang is president of Astra Publishing House.
Bastagli says in the release, “Our mission at Astra House will be to advocate for authors who experience their subject deeply and personally, and who have a strong point of view; writers who represent multifaceted expressions of intellectual thought and personal experience, and who can introduce readers to new perspectives about their everyday lives as well as the lives of others.”
Awards
Alberto Alesina, Carlo Favero, and Francesco Giavazzi won the Hayek Book Prize for AUSTERITY: When It Works and When It Doesn’t (Princeton University Press).
NYPL announced the 2020 Young Lions Fiction Award finalists:
Your House Will Pay, by Steph Cha
Disappearing Earth, by Julia Phillips
Such a Fun Age, by Kiley Reid
Home Remedies, by Xuan Juliana Wang
Lot, by Bryan Washington
Forthcoming
Jeff Benedict‘s THE DYNASTY, a comprehensive account of how the New England Patriots built their dominant team and why it was able to stay on top so long, based on interviews with more than 200 people, will be published September 1 by Avid Reader Press