Eamon Dolan will join Simon & Schuster Publishing Group as vice president and executive editor starting October 1. Dolan was most recently with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, where he ran his own imprint, Eamon Dolan Books, which was shut down in July. Simon & Schuster president and publisher Jonathan Karp says, “Eamon will continue to do what he has done so brilliantly for years: Identify, edit, and publish some of the best writers and thinkers in the culture – authors whose works are relevant to understanding our times and how they are changing, and capable of being just as meaningful in the future as they are today.”
Tamar Brazis will join Viking Children’s as editorial director, picture books, reporting to Ken Wright. She will develop her own list of picture books and work more broadly on expanding the imprint’s picture book list. She was editorial director at Abrams Children’s, where she worked for nearly 15 years. Wright says: “I have followed Tamar’s career from the sidelines for years and hoped for many of them that she and I would one day work together. I am really very excited that Tamar will bring her immense talent and her instinct for what makes great commercial and literary picture books to Viking and Penguin Young Readers.”
Alice Tassel has been promoted to director of the French Publishers’ Agency in New York. Lucinda Karter is leaving to become a full time agent with the Jennifer Lyons Literary Agency.
Devin Ross has been promoted to literary agent at New Leaf Literary & Media.
Longtime Reed Exhibitions executive, senior vp Ed Several, who led the energetic “reimagined” Book Expo that nonetheless drew fewer booksellers and librarians, is leaving the company in October for another job after 14 years with the company. Event manager Jenny Martin “will be stepping into the leadership role for the foreseeable future” at Book Expo. Reed Pop Global president Lance Fensterman and vp Michael Kisken will continue to oversee the event.
At Open Road, Megan Buckman has been promoted to director of production.
Awards
Editor and publisher Tim Duggan will receive the Biographers International Organization’s editorial excellence award.
The National Book Foundation will award Isabel Allende with its Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, a lifetime achievement award. Allende is the author of The House of Spirits and 22 other titles, as well as a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Lifetime Achievement Award from PEN America. NBF board of directors chairman David Steinberger says, “Able to forge profoundly emotional connections with readers around the world, Isabel Allende has offered generations of fans multilayered and deeply felt narratives that illuminate the rich lives and histories of her characters. Allende pulls from her own experiences to offer a global audience access to geographically and culturally specific stories that might otherwise never reach them.” Luis Alberto Urrea will present Allende the award at the NBA ceremony on November 14.