BTW News Briefs

Ingram Content Group Announces Staff Changes and Promotions

Ingram Content Group announced several staff changes and promotions last week.

Matthew Dickie, who previously worked for Usborne Publishing, is now a European sales manager with Ingram Publisher Services’ international sales team.

Most recently the U.S. sales and marketing director at Nobrow U.S./Flying Eye Books, Tucker Stone has joined Consortium Book Sales & Distribution as a client marketing manager. In his new position at Consortium, Stone will focus on the children’s and comics market.

At Lightning Source U.K., Philippa Malicka has been promoted from key account sales manager to business development manager, and Nick Singh has been promoted from account representative to key account sales manager at Lightning Source U.K., IngramSpark.

Tyler Montgomery has received a promotion to content manager from his position as inside sales representative at Ingram Book Group. Louisa Brody has joined Two Rivers Distribution and Ingram Academic Services in the newly created role of manager, client relations.

Carolina Wren Press Acquires John F. Blair

Carolina Wren Press in Durham, North Carolina, has acquired the trademarks and backlist of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, publisher, John F. Blair, Publishers Weekly reported.

Effective January 1, 2018, the combined company will function as a nonprofit publisher and be renamed Blair. This acquisition brings more than 140 titles from John F. Blair’s list to the new company, which will be based out of Durham and its titles distributed through Consortium.

Carolina Wren Press publisher Lynn York told PW that purchasing the company will give them the opportunity to publish nonfiction thatgenerates a steady income stream; John F. Blair’s backlist includes more than a dozen volumes of slave narratives and autobiographies of black leaders.

Blair titles to publish in 2018 include Beaut by Donald Morrill in May and the short story collection Useful Phrases for Immigrants by May-lee Chai in the fall. Another upcoming title is a book of essays by Hal Crowther.

Edelweiss to Include WNDB Logo for Books in WNDB App

We Need Diverse Books announced last week that books that appear in WNDB’s OurStory app will now be marked with a special WNDB icon in the Edelweiss catalog.

This partnership between We Need Diverse Books and Edelweiss will help booksellers identify WNDB-curated books and add to their collections of diverse titles.

WNDB also announced that it will continue to accept nominations for its Bookseller of the Year Award until October 1.

Frankfurt Book Fair Fellows Announced

Sixteen fellows have been chosen to receive a scholarship to the Frankfurt Book Fair this year.

The fellowship program, which was launched in 1998 to mark the 50th anniversary of the Frankfurt Book Fair, provides information and networking opportunities within the international publishing world.

The list of winners, who will be sponsored to attend the fair from October 1 to 15, consists of publishing professionals from 16 countries. From the U.S., New Directions Publishing fiction editor Tynan Kogane will be the program’s first Fred Kobrak Frankfurt Fellow. This new award will fund one fellow a year for the next 10 years.

Kwame Alexander Named First Conroy Legacy Award Winner

Virginia-based poet, educator, and New York Times bestselling author Kwame Alexander has been awarded the first annual Conroy Legacy Award, which was established in 2017 in honor of the example set by the beloved Southern author Pat Conroy.

The award is judged by a jury of Southern independent booksellers and recognizes writers who have impacted their literary communities, and who demonstrate support for independent bookstores, write about their home place, and show support for other authors. It also provides that a donation be made to the Pat Conroy Literary Center as well as to a literary entity chosen by the winning writer.

Alexander is the author of 24 books, including The Crossover, which received the 2015 John Newbery Medal, the Coretta Scott King Author Award Honor, the NCTE Charlotte Huck Honor, the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award, and the Paterson Poetry Prize. He also spearheads the Page to Stage Writing Workshop.

Natasha Trethewey Wins Heinz Award

Poet Natasha Trethewey, whose works include Native Guard: Poems; Domestic Work; and Bellocq’s Ophelia: Poems, will receive the 22nd annual Heinz Award, valued at $250,000, in the Arts and Humanities category.

The awards, which are administered by the Heinz Family Foundation, were established in 1993 in memory of U.S. Senator John Heinz and also recognize contributions to several other categories:

• Environment: Gregory Asner, Ph.D., Stanford, California
• Human Condition: Angela Blanchard, Houston, Texas
• Public Policy: Mona Hanna-Attisha, M.D., Flint, Michigan
• Technology, the Economy and Employment: Joseph DeSimone, Ph.D., Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and Redwood City, California

The winners will receive their awards in Pittsburgh on October 18.

2017 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize Shortlists Announced

The Brooklyn Public Library has announced the shortlists for its 2017 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize, which recognizes “works that question established ways of thinking and advance Brooklyn Public Library’s mission of bringing together the borough’s diverse communities to explore urgent social, political, and artistic issues.”

The 2017 shortlist is as follows:

Fiction and Poetry

• Exit West: A Novel by Mohsin Hamid (Riverhead Books)
• What It Means When a Man Falls From the Sky: Stories by Lesley Nneka Arimah (Riverhead Books)
• IRL by Tommy Pico (Birds)

Nonfiction

• Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann (Doubleday)
• Fear City: New York’s Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics by Kim Phillips-Fein (Metropolitan Books)
• The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein (Liveright Publishing)

The judging panel includes librarians from more than a dozen BPL branches as well as authors Claudia Rankine and Siri Hustvedt, and Simon Critchley of the New York Times and the New School, among others.