The finalists for the 2013 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction were announced Wednesday. The winner will be announced on March 19, and the 33rd Annual PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction Ceremony & Dinner will be held on Saturday, May 4 at the Folger Shakespeare Library. The finalists are: Amelia Gray, Threats (Farrar, Straus) Laird Hunt, Kind One (Coffee House Press) T. Geronimo Johnson, Hold it ‘Til It Hurts (Coffee House Press) Thomas Mallon, Watergate (Pantheon) Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Everything Begins & Ends at the Kentucky Club (Cinco Puntos Press) Barnes & Noble also announced the winners of their annual Discover Awards: Fiction: […]
Awards
People, Awards, Etc.: Thoma, DiMona Join Writers House
Writers House announced that Geri Thoma and Lisa DiMona have joined the agency. Thoma, who joins on March 18, was previously partner at Markson Thoma, while DiMona, who will start on April 8, was founder and sole proprietor of Lark Productions, a literary agency and book development company established in 1998. “We are delighted that Geri and Lisa are joining our growing team of agents. Their expertise in nonfiction will complement our list and enlarge the scope of the agency,” said Writers House chairman Amy Berkower in a statement. In addition, Stephen Barr was recently promoted to senior agent, while […]
People, Etc.
Kevin Powers won the PEN/Hemingway Award for his debut novel THE YELLOW BIRDS. He will receive his award at a ceremony at the JFK Presidential Library & Museum on March 24. In the UK, Tesco has hired Gavin Sathianathan to head their ebook portion of their blinkbox digital media offer, to launch later this year. Tesco had purchased Mobcast last September as the foundation of their ebook program. They will offer digital books, music and movies under the blinkbox name. Currently working at Facebook, Sathianathan had worked as an intern at the previous incarnation of blinkbox (a streaming video company). […]
Fountain, Solomon, Caro Among NBCC Winners
The National Book Critics Circle Award winners were announced Thursday evening: FICTION Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (Ecco) NONFICTION Andrew Solomon, Far From the Tree (Scribner) BIOGRAPHY Robert A. Caro, The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson (Knopf) AUTOBIOGRAPHY Leanne Shapton, Swimming Studies (Blue Rider Press) CRITICISM Marina Warner, Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights (Belknap Press) POETRY D. A. Powell, Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys (Graywolf Press) Some of the suspense was deflated when, a little less than an hour before the NBCC ceremony began at 6 PM, NYT publishing reporter […]
People, Etc.
At today’s annual meeting of the Association of American Publishers (AAP), Simon & Schuster ceo Carolyn Reidy formally took over from Cengage executive chairman Ron Dunn as chair of the organization’s board of directors. In the UK, Jo Unwin will join Doubleday UK as deputy publisher on April 8, reporting to Marianne Velmans. Unwin was previously an agent at Conville & Walsh, which announced it sold a 50 percent stake in its business to Curtis Brown (see separate story). Catherine Burke has been promoted to publisher, Sphere fiction at Little, Brown UK. At Penguin, Suzie Sisoler has been promoted to senior director […]
People, Etc.
Michele Martin will join the Gallery Books Group on March 4 as vp, associate publisher, reporting to Louise Burke. Previously she was founder and proprietor of MDM Management, which will now be assumed by CSG Literary Partners, and before that she held executive positions at Avalon, Langenscheidt and Doubleday, where she created and oversaw the Main Street Books imprint. At Penguin, Katherine Tiernan McCahill has been promoted to assistant director of the digital products group. In Canada, former senior executives at D&M Publishers Chris Labonte, Peter Cocking and Richard Nadeau have founded Figure1 Publishing, devoted to books in the art […]