The Authors Guild announced that longtime executive director Paul Aiken, 54, was diagnosed with early-stage ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease). Aiken is currently in remission of symptoms due to steroid therapy, and promises to start posting his medical records for those who are interested in this treatment regimen. “He admits he has no way of knowing whether his remission will continue or whether he has some odd strain of ALS, so his treatment might not apply to others. He’s hoping to use the blog to help find out.” Authors Guild president Scott Turow says,”It’s business as usual at the Authors Guild. […]
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Finally, the National Book Awards Fiction Longlist
The last of the four NBA longlists, for fiction, was announced Thursday morning. Evenly divided between men and women, it includes two previous NBA winners (Alice McDermott and Thomas Pynchon, though the latter declined to accept his 1974 award for Gravity’s Rainbow) and a few previous nominees. There is only one debut novelist (Anthony Marra), two story collections (Saunders and Silber), and most of the nominees come from four big houses. As people are discussing the newly announced changes in Booker candidates for 2014, under the existing rules Jhumpa Lahiri is a contender for both prizes: Pacific, Tom Drury (Grove) […]
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Sony svp, global retail CRM & brand marketing Susan Jurevics will relocate to London and take over as ceo of Pottermore, filling the position vacated when Charlie Redmayne returned to Harper UK as ceo this summer. Jurevics oversaw Sony’s relationship with Pottermore. Ellen Cormier has been promoted to digital marketing associate at Macmillan Children’s. At Harlequin, Kathleen Reed has been promoted to senior managing editor while Kristin Errico moves up to assistant managing editor. At Harlequin UK, Samantha Walmsley has been promoted to senior managing editor and Lucy Gough moves up to managing editorial coordinator. Christy Mirabal has joined Frederator […]
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Penguin Random House has announced a new cross-company senior management team for the merged company’s combined fulfillment operations. President and coo Madeline McIntosh notes that “of the many opportunities we will have in our new company to invest in operational capabilities, our physical supply chain is one of the most essential.” She adds that “the project to develop a cohesive Penguin Random House fulfillment network…will extend over time, with our separate Penguin and Random House distribution centers’ day-to-day operational responsibilities remaining unchanged in the meantime.” Random House’s Annette Danek has been named svp, director of fulfillment, overseeing both the operation […]
NBA Nonfiction Longlist Includes Packer and Wright
The National Book Awards announced their third longlist, of nonfiction candidates, on Wednesday morning. Norton led all publishers with three titles in contention. (The list also includes three New Yorker staff writers: Lepore, Packer and Wright.): Finding Florida: The True Story of the Sunshine State, T.D. Allman (Grove/Atlantic) Facing the Wave: A Journey in the Wake of the Tsunami, Gretel Ehrlich (Pantheon) The Wolf and the Watchman: A Father, a Son, and the CIA, Scott C. Johnson (Norton) Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin, Jill Lepore (Knopf) Hitler’s Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields, […]
National Book Awards Poetry Longlist
The second of four longlists was announced Tuesday morning — with 10 poetry collections from ten different imprints: Metaphysical Dog, by Frank Bidart Bury My Clothes, by Roger Bonair-Agard Stay, Illusion, by Lucie Brock-Broido So Recently Rent a World, New and Selected Poems: 1968-2012, by Andrei Codrescu Seasonal Works with Letters on Fire, by Brenda Hillman The Big Smoke, by Adrian Matejka American Amnesiac, by Diane Raptosh Black Aperture, by Matt Rasmussen Transfer of Qualities, by Martha Ronk Incarnadine, by Mary Szybist