Director of publicity for Bloomsbury Children’s and Walker Children’s Katy Hershberger is leaving. She will start next week as an associate director of publicity for Simon & Schuster Children’s, as well as the Atheneum, and Margaret McElderry Books imprint. Following the sale of AP Watt to United Agents late last year, Derek Johns will retire at the end of November. He has been at AP Watt since 1992. At Harlequin’s Mira, Tara Parsons has been promoted to editorial director. Casey Maloney joined Picador as senior publicist. She was most recently a publicist at Penguin, working on the Gotham, Avery, Viking […]
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Valentina Kalk will leave her position as chief of UN Publications in late September to become director of the Brookings Institution Press in Washington DC. Jonathan Hevenstone has joined Atypon as svp business development. The company, which provides a software-as-a-service content delivery platform that has focused on STM publishers, will be expanding to “adjacent publishing areas.” Hevenstone was vp business development at SourceHOV and prior that he worked at Jouve. The recently-formed League of Assistant Editors — focused on helping young editors and agents connect with each other to advance the next generation of publishing professionals and authors — has […]
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David Inman will return to Quarto in September as managing director of their UK publishing group, Aurum. He is currently sales and marketing director at Templar, prior to which he was sales and marketing director Quarto. Former senior editor at Ballantine and literary agent Pamela Dean Strickler, 53, died July 18 from cancer. Strickler spent sixteen years at Ballantine before leaving to start her own agency, specializing in romance, women’s fiction, and historical fiction. The Dayton Literary Peace Prize’s lifetime achievement award has gone to Wendell Berry. He tells the AP: “As a poet and fiction writer, my goal was to write […]
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Catherine Onder will join Bloomsbury Children’s on September 3 as editorial director, reporting to publishing director Cindy Loh. Most recently she was senior editor at Disney Hyperion. Loh says in the announcement: “Cat’s publishing vision perfectly dovetails with Bloomsbury’s plans for the future. We have three ambitious new lines launching next year and a fresh, new focus. I can’t wait for Cat to lead our team and grow the list in even more exciting directions.” The latest “cover reveal” is for Sue Monk Kidd’s January 7, 2014 release, THE INVENTION OF WINGS. The 14-title longlist for the FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book […]
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Amulet has revealed details on Jeff Kinney‘s forthcoming eighth Wimpy Kid book, HARD LUCK, sporting a lime green cover for its November 5 release. Kinney says, “As a writer, there’s something wickedly satisfying about putting Greg Heffley under duress, and in the eighth book, Greg suffers a multitude of indignities. But this time around he has a secret weapon against the slings and arrows of middle school.” Meryl Streep will narrate the audio version of Colm Toibin’s THE TESTAMENT OF MARY, for September release. Some day soon, now that HarperCollins comprises a more meaningful portion of the new foxless News Corp., […]
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Abrams announced a number of promotions in its marketing and publicity departments. Veronica Wasserman has been promoted to brand director, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, a new position. In the adult trade department, Jennifer Brunn has been promoted to senior director of publicity and Claire Bamundo moves up to director, publicity and brand strategy. In addition, Marisa Dobson has been promoted to senior publicist and Merle Brown adds the responsibilities of manager, corporate events to her role as executive assistant to the ceo. Former Abrams executive director of publicity Katrina Weidknecht recently left the company after six years to move […]