Jill Schwartzman, vp and executive editor at Dutton, will take on the additional role of editorial director of Plume.
Whitney Hu has joined National Book Foundation as director of public programs. She was formerly communications director at the office of New York City Council member Brad Lander.
Three former employees of Midas Public Relations — Daniel Freeman and Zekra Rahman (who were associate directors) and Liz Mallett (who was a senior account manager) have formed Colour PR, focusing on publishing related work, as well as entertainment and leisure. Last week, Midas announced that Jason Bartholomew was leaving his position as rights director at Hodder & Stoughton to join Midas as joint ceo, with special responsibility for new markets and services.
In case the Trump administration fails again to eliminate the National Endowment for the Humanities outright, they have nominated former Virginia Quarterly Review publisher and current acting head (formally senior deputy chairman, head of the agency) Jon Parrish Peede to serve as chairman of the agency.
Irish author Emma Hannigan, 45, died on March 3 of cancer. Hannigan was the author of The Wedding Promise and The Perfect Gift, among many other novels, and the memoir All To Live For: Fighting Cancer, Finding Hope.
Corporate
CEO of the national education nonprofit New Leaders Jean Desravines has joined Houghton Mifflin Harcourt‘s board. The company also released recent correspondence with the SEC in which the agency wondered whether, given their terrible performance as of a year ago, they needed to take a charge against goodwill (as both Barnes & Noble and Barnes & Noble Education did recently). HMH’s reply assured that their goodwill impairment test was fine and said they “will enhance our disclosure” in future filings.
Zagat guides, after languishing at Google since the search giant purchased it in 2011 for $151 million, have been sold to The Infatuation for undisclosed terms. Zagat’s finally stopped issuing printed restaurant guides in 2017, but ceo of The Infatuation Chris Stang tells CNBC, “We’d like to get back into game of printing guides at some point, I think people really like that and we’d love to start that again.”