The Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded this morning to Alice Munro, cited briefly as “master of the contemporary short story.” She is the 13th woman and first Canadian (aside from 1976 winner Saul Bellow, born near Montreal) to win the literature prize, which comes one year after her most recent short story collection DEAR LIFE and several months after telling the National Post and the New York Times she had retired from writing. In a follow-up interview with press Swedish Academy permanent secretary Peter Englund said: “I think no one has better deconstructed the central myth of modern romantic […]
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Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy is the latest pick for the Today Book Club. Hachette Book Group filed suit against Stephen Baldwin in New York Supreme Court, seeking to recover a $110,000 advance against a nonfiction originally due in 2009 that they say he never delivered. Harper UK is setting up a new fiction imprint, within their Harper Fiction division, called The Borough Press. Launching in 2014 — and publishing their already-announced Austen Project that has well-known authors retelling Jane Austen’s classics — it is led by Katie Espiner. As part of a reorganization that consolidates all […]
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Melina Gerosa Bellows has been promoted to publisher of National Geographic Books, adding responsibility for sales, marketing and distribution to her current role as National Geographic’s chief creative officer for Books, Kids and Family. Ken Rhodes has been promoted to managing director, NBN International. Will Lach is joining the American Museum of Natural History as director, licensing and publishing. Previously he was manager of product development, Department of Printed Product, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. At the Stuart Krichevsky Literary Agency, Ross Harris has been promoted to literary agent. At Harper Children’s, Melissa Miller has been promoted to editor […]
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Counterpoint Press editor-at-large Dan Smetanka has been appointed executive editor. He will continue to acquire fiction and nonfiction for both the Counterpoint and Soft Skull lists and will remain based in Los Angeles. Sarah Younger has been promoted to associate agent at the Nancy Yost Literary Agency, where she has worked for two years. The Cooke Agency International will sell foreign rights outside of North America to the list represented by fellow Canadians Rick Broadhead & Associates. At Dutton, Liza Cassity has been promoted to senior publicist. In the UK, the Blake Friedmann Literary Agency has hired David Newton as […]
First and Last
For last-minute planners headed to the Frankfurt Book Fair, you can still enroll for what promises to be a very interesting Publishers Launch conference on Tuesday (from 8:30 to 2:00). And you can still use our code PL13PartnerMC20 to save 20 percent on registration. We have newsmakers Trip Adler of Scribd; Charlie Redmayne of HarperCollins UK; Russ Grandinetti of Amazon; Jonathan Nowell of Nielsen Book; Alan Lau of Wattpad; and Otis Chandler of Goodreads — plus Ken Brooks, Rebecca Smart, Marcus Leaver, Micah Bowers, Octavio Kulesz and a panel on Germany’s emergence as the new market to go digital, with a closing […]
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Whitney Frick will join Flatiron Books as senior editor on October 21. Previously she was an editor at Scribner. Also at Macmillan, Anne Marie Tallberg has been promoted to vp, associate publisher of St. Martin’s Paperbacks and Griffin, as well as publishing director of eBook Originals. In the UK, Jo Unwin is leaving her position as deputy publishing director at Doubleday UK after a brief stretch to return to agenting. Her new Jo Unwin Literary Agency will work in association with Rogers, Coleridge and White, and she will be based in their offices. Bloomsbury Spark, the company’s digital YA and […]