John Maas and Sarah Passick have joined Sterling Lord Literistic as associate agents, working with Celeste Fine on platform-driven nonfiction. Maas was previously an assistant editor at Wiley and will focus on serious nonfiction, business, science, and personal development. Passick was an agent at Stonesong and will focus on commercial nonfiction, food, celebrity, bloggers, and successfully self-published authors. Tim Wudurski has joined Chronicle Books as manager of production and creative systems. Previously, was responsible for production and IT at California Home+Design, 7×7 and Spin. At Basic Books, Cassie Nelson is being promoted to director of publicity, and Betsy DeJesu is rising to associate director of […]
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Modiano Wins Nobel Literature Prize, and More Awards
The Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded on Thursday to the French author Patrick Modiano. In their citation, the prize judges commended Modiano “for the art of memory with which he has evoked the most ungraspable human destinies and uncovered the life-world of the occupation.” As with the most recent French Nobel laureate, J.M.G. Le Clezio in 2008, few of Modiano’s more than 30 novels have been translated into English. The most recent translation was DORA BRUDER/THE SEARCH WARRANT, published in the US by the University of California Press (1999) and in the UK by Harvill Secker (2000). But Yale University Press is scheduled to […]
People: Rasenberger to Run Authors Guild
The Authors Guild has hired Mary Rasenberger to succeed Paul Aiken as executive director, on November 3. Currently a partner at the media law firm Cowan, DeBaets, Abrahams and Sheppard, she recently was director of the Library of Congress’s National Digital Preservation Program from 2006 to 2008 and prior to that spend 4 years at the Copyright Office as policy planning advisor and then senior advisor for public policy. Aiken, who announced a year ago that he has ALS, will work for the Guild as a consultant for the next two years. Guild president Roxana Robinson says in the announcement: […]
People, Etc.: Dylan’s Limited-Edition The Lyrics (At $200), and More
Simon & Schuster will publish Bob Dylan‘s THE LYRICS: Since 1962, on October 28. They call it “the first comprehensive, rigorously annotated, and definitive collection of Bob Dylan’s lyrics to be published” and say it is the product of a collaboration “over many years between Dylan and a team of editors led by Sir Christopher Ricks, Warren Professor of the Humanities and codirector of the Editorial Institute at Boston University.” The full-color volume of 1,034 pages will be limited to a single printing of 3,000 copies, retailing for $200 each. Separately, Dylan will sell 50 boxed, numbered and signed editions […]
People, Awards, Etc.
Literary agent Loretta Barrett, 74, died peacefully in Manhattan from complications of a brain tumor, her agency reports. Barrett began working in publishing in 1967 as an editor at Anchor Press, where she was promoted to editor-in-chief in 1970. She left Doubleday in 1990 to start her agency, Loretta Barrett Books. Barrett served on board of directors of Reading is Fundamental for 32 years, most recently as secretary, and in 2011 the organization honored her efforts, reporting that she was personally responsible for an estimated 3 million new books being given to poor American children to keep as their own. […]
Awards, Etc.
Canada’s Giller Prize announced their shortlist on Monday: David Bezmogzis, The Betrayers (Little, Brown/Harper Canada) Frances Itani, Tell (Black Cat (forthcoming)/Harper Canada) Sean Michaels, Us Conductors (Tin House/RH Canada) Heather O’Neill, The Girl Who Was Saturday Night (FSG/Harper Canada) Miriam Toews, All My Puny Sorrows (McSweeney’s/Knopf Canada) Padma Viswanathan, The Ever After of Ashwin Rao (RH Canada) The Governor General’s Literary Awards also announced their shortlists Tuesday in a number of categories, with the winners to be announced on November 18. The fiction finalists include: Michael Crummey, Sweetland (Liveright/Doubleday Canada) Bill Gaston, Juliet Was a Surprise (Hamish Hamilton) Claire Holden Rothman, […]