Christopher MacLehose is leaving the MacLehose Press imprint that he founded 13 years ago. Katharina Bielenberg will be promoted to publisher.
Christy Ottaviano is leaving Holt Children’s, where she has worked for 28 years, to join Little, Brown Children’s on November 30. She will continue to publish there under a Christy Ottaviano Books imprint. Jessica Anderson is moving with her.
Jay Pabarue has joined The New Press as marketing and publicity associate. He was previously marketing manager at Book of the Month.
Randy Kessler, 50, national sales manager at Scholastic, died on October 22. He began working at Scholastic in 2004. Elizabeth Whiting, director of national accounts for Scholastic Trade, said, “Everyone at Scholastic who knew Randy felt a special connection to him–including each and every person he met in the office. He was friends with every assistant, every manager, anyone who crossed his path–all the way up to Scholastic President & CEO, Dick Robinson. Randy loved working for Scholastic. His infectious smile and generous spirit inspired all who spent time with him, and his competitive nature made us all better. We deeply mourn the loss of such a great man, friend, and role model, and our hearts are with his family at this unimaginably difficult time.” His Scholastic colleagues have started a fundraiser to help his wife and two daughters.
Charles McGrath remembers Dan Menaker in the New Yorker: “He was always a little ambivalent, though, about the book business, which he more than once called a lottery and a crap shoot. He insisted that his real home—his true family—was The New Yorker, where he had worked for twenty-six years…. He was the sort of painstaking, old-school editor who fusses over semicolons, but also part anarchist, bristling against established authority and received wisdom.”
Awards
Biographers International Organization has given their annual Editorial Excellence Award to Gayatri Patnaik at Beacon Press.
Abandoned: America’s Lost Youth and the Crisis of Disconnection by Anne S. Kim won the Goddard Riverside Stephan Russo Book Prize for Social Justice.
Distribution
Consortium Book Sales & Distribution is selling and distributing 1984 Publishing as of August 29. Beginning January4, they will sell and distribute Albatros Media, Black Ocean, Eye of Newt, Not a Cult, OR Books, and Yoffy Press.