SVP international sales and rights at Abrams, Mary Wowk will retire on December 31. Wowk joined Abrams in March 2007 as vp sales. Her long career in publishing has included working at Houghton Mifflin, Little Brown, Simon & Schuster, Anness Publishing, and Black Dog & Leventhal.
At Viking Penguin, Maya Baran has been promoted to assistant director of publicity; Kristina Fazzalaro to publicity manager; and Ciara Johnson to associate publicist.
Ilana Gold has joined Workman Publishing as assistant director of publicity. She was previously at Hilsinger-Mendelson.
An effort is underway to find a buyer who will save the Venice, FL house of the late Walter Farley, author of The Black Stallion. The Florida Trust for Historic Preservation recently listed the house, designed by Sarasota School architect Ralph Twitchell, as an important one to preserve.
Imprints
Simon & Schuster UK will divide its adult nonfiction publishing program starting in January, putting commercial nonfiction under a new UK version of Gallery Books. Serious nonfiction will remain under the Simon & Schuster UK line, with Scribner UK publishing a small number of literary nonfiction titles.
Despite the new imprint name, there will remain a single adult nonfiction editorial team acquiring for both lists, under publishing director Holly Harris, who joined the company in July.
Awards
Ahead of the NBA nominations, on Monday Canada’s Giller Prize announced their shortlist, with the winner to be named November 9:
Ridgerunner, by Gil Adamson (House of Anansi)
Here The Dark, by David Bergen (Biblioasis)
Polar Vortex, by Shani Mootoo (Book*hug Press/Akashic)
The Glass Hotel, Emily St. John Mandel (Harper Canada/Knopf)
How To Pronounce Knife, Souvankham Thammavongsa (McClelland & Stewart/Little, Brown)
Remembrance
Simon & Schuster has put together an homage to the late Alice Mayhew, who died in February: Written tributes from over 60 authors, colleagues and friends, collected in a downloadable ebook.
Distribution
Two Rivers will handle global sales and distribution for Silicon Valley startup Ta-Da! Language Productions in spring 2021.
A reminder that you can still submit information about your upcoming virtual rights/pitch sessions through our open form for dealmakers and rights people: publun.ch/pitches. You can include individually-scheduled events as well as “official” Frankfurt pitch webinar slots. To view the crowdsourced schedule — with sessions already underway, including Amazon Publishing’s global rights webinar this afternoon, visit publun.ch/pitchsessions.