Stephanie Sinclair will join CookeMcDermid as literary agent. She was at Transatlantic Literary Agency.
Patrice Caldwell joins New Leaf Literary & Media as literary agent. She was at the Howard Morhaim Literary Agency.
Parneshia Jones has been promoted to director of Northwestern University Press, effective September 21.
Anne Bowman joins Chelsea Green in the new role of vp of business development and global sales. She has been head of new business (children’s rights) at Penguin Random House UK. Bowman will remain based in London and will split her time between Chelsea Green’s UK and Vermont offices.
At Tom Doherty Associates, Amy Sefton has been promoted to AdPromo senior designer and Makenna Sidle to AdPromo coordinator.
Margaret Wolfson will join Lerner Publishing Group as human resources director, starting September 14 and based in Minneapolis.
Francesca Main‘s new imprint at Orion, launching next May, will be called Phoenix, bringing back a name that was previously a paperback imprint of Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
Leah Woodburn has joined Daniela Schlingmann Literary Scouting as publishing consultant. She was previously formerly associate publisher at Headline.
Shere Hite, 77, best known for The Hite Report: A Nationwide Study of Female Sexuality, died at home on Wednesday. Her book is reported to have sold more than 50 million copies since publication in 1976.
Bookselling
As previously promised, Bookshop.com announced itself to the UK trade today and plans to launch for UK consumers in November. Former international vice president for Etsy Nicole Vanderbilt is managing director of the UK division; former head of buying at Foyles Jasper Sutcliffe is publisher and affiliate manager; and former owner of bookstore Mostly Books Mark Thornton is bookshop partnership manager.
Wholesaler Gardners will fill Ingram’s role in the UK, fulfilling all customer orders. Founder Andy Hunter told The Bookseller, “It’s a little bit insane to try and launch in the UK when we just got our arms around the US business. But the Booksellers Association in the UK started reaching out to me in the spring as well as many independent bookstores and publishers.”
Picks
Barnes & Noble chose Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi as its September National Book Club selection.
Awards
The New York Public Library named finalists for its Young Lions Fiction Award:
Steph Cha, Your House Will Pay
Julia Phillips, Disappearing Earth
Kiley Reid, Such a Fun Age
Xuan Juliana Wang, Home Remedies
Bryan Washington, Lot
Publicity
For authors with books on politics, “There isn’t any show on television that sells more books than [Rachel] Maddow” agent Keith Urbahn at Javelin tells the AP. “She has the most engaged, book buying audience bar none. Every time one of our authors has been on, she has shot the book to number one.”
Maddow recently told viewers it “isn’t like me” to feature so many authors on her show — but “everybody is basically getting it all off their chests at the same time.”