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Library of America President Cheryl Hurley to Retire

Library of America president Cheryl Hurley will retire at the end of this year, the organization has announced.

Hurley, who helped found the Library of America 35 years ago, will serve as an adviser after her retirement and will be succeeded by publisher Max Rudin.

In addition, Daniel Baker, who currently serves as vice president and CFO of Library of America, will become the organization’s COO. Editor-in-chief Geoffrey O’Brien will also retire at the end of 2017, but will continue on as consulting editor. As a result, the Library of America is launching a search for a new editorial director.

S&S Launches Skybound Books

Simon & Schuster is launching a new imprint called Skybound Books, which will focus on science fiction, fantasy, and horror titles, mixing original works with spinoffs of existing Skybound Entertainment properties, the Hollywood Reporter reported.

The multi-platform entertainment company Skybound Entertainment was founded in 2010 by The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman and David Alpert. S&S’s Atria division will launch the new imprint, which will release four to six titles per year, publishing a mix of original fiction and nonfiction and works based on existing Skybound properties.

Michael Braff, who previously worked at Penguin Random House editing science fiction and fantasy for Del Rey Books, will help oversee the new imprint as senior editor. Braff will report to Skybound Entertainment senior vice president and editor-in-chief Sean Mackiewicz.

Cristobal Pera Joins Vintage Espanol as Publishing Director

Cristobal Pera has joined Vintage Espanol, Penguin Random House’s Spanish-language imprint in New York, as its new publishing director. There, Pera will acquire and publish books in original Spanish in addition to Spanish translations, Publishers Weekly reported.

Pera previously served as editorial director at Random House Mondadori Mexico and is the founding director, in 2015, of The Wylie Agency España, a branch of the The Wylie Agency aimed at attracting Spanish-language authors.

Pera succeeds Jaime de Pablos, who has resigned. As part of the change, Ingrid Paredes was promoted to Vintage Espanol’s publishing manager.

Investor Urges B&N Board to Sell Company

After acquiring a “meaningful ownership stake” in Barnes & Noble, Sandell Asset Management Corp. has publicly released a letter to Barnes & Noble’s Board of Directors seeking to begin a “constructive dialogue” regarding the company’s next steps, Business Wire reported.

In the July 25 letter, CEO Thomas E. Sandell writes that Barnes & Noble should not be a stand-alone publicly traded company, as the public market is not currently hospitable to retailers. Stakeholders, he writes, would be better served by B&N operating as a private entity or as a division within a larger organization.

Sandell states: “It is our opinion that the public market for retail stocks is contributing to a risky and inhospitable environment under which the stock price of Barnes & Noble may not fairly reflect its intrinsic value anytime in the foreseeable future if it remains a stand-alone company.”

Sandell’s letter can be read in full here.

S&S CEO Carolyn Reidy to Co-Headline Frankfurt CEO Talk

Simon & Schuster president and CEO Carolyn Reidy will co-headline the Frankfurt CEO Talk at this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair, along with Guillaume Dervieux, who heads French publishing house Albin Michel, The Bookseller reported.

At the October 11 event, Reidy, a “Guest of Honor” at the fair, will participate in a discussion about “strategic developments in international publishing, in particular the intrinsic relevance of books and publishers in today’s global context of media competition, as well as the transformation of audiences and their cultural practices,” according to The Bookseller.

The panel discussion will be presented by Publishers Weekly on behalf of the U.S., The Bookseller (U.K.), buchreport (Germany), Livres Hebdo (France), PublishNews (Brazil), and Bookdao (China).

2017 New England Book Award Winners Announced

New England Independent Booksellers Association (NEIBA) has announced the 2017 New England Book Awards winners.

The award is given to a specific title that must be either about New England, set in New England, or by an author living in New England and is a hardcover, a paperback original, or reissue published between September 1 and August 31. This year’s winners are as follows:

  • Fiction: The Women In The Castle: A Novel by Jessica Shattuck (William Morrow)
  • Nonfiction: The Stranger In The Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit by Michael Finkel (Knopf)
  • Children’s (Ages Birth-11): Some Writer! The Story of E.B. White by Melissa Sweet (HMH Books for Young Readers)
  • Young Adult Winner: The Gentleman’s Guide To Vice And Virtue by Mackenzi Lee (Katherine Tegen Books)

The NEIBA awards committee chose five finalists in each category, and NEIBA bookstore members voted to choose the four winners. Each award comes with a $250 check for a literacy charity of the author’s choice.

Great Lakes, Great Reads 2017 Winners Announced

The Great Lakes Independent Booksellers Association (GLIBA) has announced the Great Lakes, Great Reads 2017 winners. The four winning books represent excellence in writing by authors from, or who have ties to, the Great Lakes region. The winners, which were determined by votes from GLIBA bookstore members, are as follows:

Adult Book Winners

  • The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Girls by Kate Moore (Sourcebooks)
  • Hillbilly Elegy by J. D. Vance (HarperCollins)

Children’s Book Winners

  • See You in the Cosmos by Jack Cheng (Penguin Random House/Dial Books for Young Readers)
  • Ada Twist, Scientist by Andrea Beaty (Abrams)

The awards will be presented at the Book Awards Dinner at the Heartland Fall Forum on October 11 in Lombard, Illinois.