Stephanie Cabot has joined Susanna Lea Associates, working primarily from the New York office. She has been at The Gernert Company since 2005, and is a French-American dual national.
Jenny Chen has been promoted to editor at Crooked Lane Books and Alcove Press, where she will acquire crime and book club fiction.
Publisher for art and architecture at Yale University Press Patricia Fidler will take on the new role of executive director of the press’s Art & Architecture ePortal as of September 1.
Meagan Levinson has been promoted to executive editor, sociology and head of paperback publishing at Princeton University Press.
Richard Charkin and Emilie Marneur (who recently left Amazon after 15 years) have joined the board of Bonnier Books UK.
Bookselling
Bank Street Bookstore will close at the end of August after 50 years in business: “Despite our efforts to strengthen sales over the past few years and our wonderfully knowledgeable booksellers, the temporary closure of the store since mid-March combined with the challenge and cost of meeting ongoing social distancing measures has led us to this decision.”
The American Booksellers Association board has proposed changes to the organization’s by-laws in order to remedy “our lack of representation and diversity on the board.” They intend to expand the board to 13 directors and will nominate two Black booksellers to the board immediately. Another new bylaw would require at least four of those 13 board seats to be held by BIPOC booksellers. ABA president Jamie Fiocco notes that, “In ABA’s history there has only been one Black board director. We wish to acknowledge our failures and focus on actual system changes to ensure the erasure of Black voices no longer continues.”
Scholarships
Simon & Schuster has established the Carolyn Kroll Reidy Memorial Scholarship to promote diversity in publishing. Named for the company’s late ceo and president, the program will fund one scholarship every year at each of the following publishing programs for the next five years: The Columbia Publishing Course, the New York University SPS Summer Publishing Institute, the Pace University MS in Publishing Program, and the University of Denver’s Publishing Institute. S&S ceo and president Jonathan Karp said, “I can’t think of a more fitting way to honor Carolyn’s legacy while helping to create a publishing industry that better reflects who we are as a nation today.”
Forthcoming
On January 5, 2021 Little, Brown will publish Michael Farris Smith‘s NICK, a prequel to THE GREAT GATSBY — which enters the public domain next year. No Exit Press will publish in the UK.
On October 15, Knopf Children’s will publish a “previously unseen manuscript” by Philip Pullman, SERPENTINE. Set after the events of His Dark Materials but before those of The Secret Commonwealth, the novella was written in 2004 for a charity auction.
