Alexis Gargagliano has left Scribner after more than 11 years and will work as a freelance editor. She has launched a new website and may be reached at alexisgargagliano@gmail.com.
Olga Filina has joined The Rights Factory as an associate agent. She was a literary assistant at The Cooke Agency (after spending more than a decade as a sales manager at national and indie bookstores).
To correct Friday’s personnel announcement, Tara Parsons is moving over to Mira as executive editor from HQN and Luna, where she held the same position.
Haruki Murakami‘s Japanese publisher says that his next novel will be issued in April. No additional details were provided. His previous work, including the 1Q84 trilogy, was published by Shinchosha, but the new novel is coming from Bungeishunju. His last major work was in April 2010, when “1Q84: Book 3,” the final volume of a trilogy, was released by Shinchosha Publishing Co. As usual, don’t expect news of US edition any time soon. Nicholas Latimer at Knopf confirms to the Washington Post, ” There is nothing in the pipeline at the moment. We have not yet commissioned a translation.”
The new James Bond novel, to be written by William Boyd, will be published in the UK on September 26 and in the US in October.
Also in the UK, Hilary Mantel is the focus of controversy for remarks about the Duchess of Cambridge (Kate)–which come from the opening of a long essay in the London Review of Books. “Royal Bodies” starts in the present, and tracks back through recent royals before ending up at her current period of focus: “The story of Henry and his wives is peculiar to its time and place, but also timeless and universally understood; it is highly political and also highly personal. It is about body parts, about what slots in where, and when: are they body parts fit for purpose, or are they diseased? It’s no surprise that so much fiction constellates around the subject of Henry and his wives. Often, if you want to write about women in history, you have to distort history to do it, or substitute fantasy for facts; you have to pretend that individual women were more important than they were or that we know more about them than we do.”
Author of The Dark Side of the Light Chasers and other spiritual books Debbie Ford, 57, passed away over the weekend. She was often featured on Oprah’s Soul Sunday, where she discussed her cancer diagnosis and her spiritual journey. Ford is remembered here by her family.