At Quarto in the UK, Piers Spence has stepped down from his role as director of co-edition publishing to run a farm in rural Devon where he plans to raise rare breed pigs and plant a vineyard. He will be replaced in February by David Breuer, chief executive of Royal Academy Enterprises, which operates the commercial activities of London’s Royal Academy of Arts, including its retail, book and magazine publishing operations. Spence will serve as a consultant to Quarto”for at least six months.”
At HarperCollins’ Morrow-Avon division, Pamela Spengler-Jaffee has been promoted to senior director of publicity. She joined the company in 2003. Danielle Bartlett has been promoted to associate director.
Laurence Hughes will join the Free Press as associate director of publicity, reporting to Carisa Hays, starting February 7. He takes over from Nicole Kalian Abbott, who is joining pr firm JCPR based in New Jersey, where she will be starting a book division as of February 1.
At Random House Publisher Services, 20-year company veteran Chuck Errig has been promoted to vp, imprint sales director, and Lane Jantzen moves up to vp, sales director.
Jürgen Snoeren has been promoted to operations digital manager at Meulenhoff Boekeri publishing group in Holland. Hajnalka Bata has been appointed publisher, fantasy and young adult fiction at Boekerij, where she has worked as a commissioning editor at since 2009.
Publisher of D&M’s Greystone Books Rob Sanders will take on the additional role of publisher of the company’s New Society Publishers as of March 1. Founders Chris and Judith Plant will “remain active on the editorial acquisition team.”
Samantha Haywood is returning to Toronto this summer after five years in Amsterdam, where she will continue to work for Transatlantic Literary Agency. (Her husband, Pieter Swinkels has left his post as publisher of Cargo and associate publisher of De Bezige Bij to work as director of publisher and industry relations EU for Kobo.)
Nobel laureate from 1992 Derek Walcott, 81, won the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry for his 2010 collection, White Egrets.
Colleagues and friends of publishing veteran, longtime
agent, and foreign rights specialist Bobbe Siegel, 89, note with sadness that she died in mid-December, though it was not previously reported to us.