BTW News Briefs

George Coe Named COO at Follett

Follett Corporation has appointed George Coe as chief operating officer for Follett and Baker & Taylor, effective March 31.

Coe, who previously served as president and CEO of Baker & Taylor, joined Follett in April 2016 as part of Follett’s acquisition of B&T. In his new role, Coe will develop and lead the execution of Follett’s enterprise strategies and direct the company’s businesses, initiatives, and resources. Reporting to Follett president and CEO Ray Griffith, Coe will also continue oversight of B&T and Follett School Solutions, the company’s pre-K–12 business.

New Staff Added for Expanded Children’s Book Week

The Children’s Book Council (CBC) and Every Child a Reader have added Audra Boltion and Shifa Kapadwala to the publicity team working to promote Children’s Book Week, this year May 1–7.

Boltion is the new media consultant for CBC/Every Child a Reader, while Kapadwala has been named CBC/Every Child a Reader’s new publicity manager, taking the place of Emma Kantor, who recently moved to a new job at Publishers Weekly.

Bookstores and libraries interested in signing up to serve as a Children’s Book Week official event location have until March 1 to register online.

PEN World Voices Festival to Focus on Gender and Power

The 13th annual PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature will focus on the complicated relationship between gender and power.

The weeklong festival in New York City, from May 1–7,  “will use literature and the arts to address how gender both enables and impairs full participation in politics and society,” according to PEN.

The festival will kick off with United Against Hate, an evening of performances and readings by Patti Smith and her daughter Jesse Smith, Ani DiFranco, and novelists Marlon James, Colum McCann, and Salman Rushdie.

Other festival highlights include a conversation between Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Trevor Noah on cultural straddling; two events on dystopian fiction exploring issues of gender, reproduction, and the environment; and panel discussions on subjects including media representation of transgender identities and sexuality and gender norms in graphic novels.

To learn more about the PEN World Voices Festival and to see a longer list of scheduled events, visit PEN America’s website.

PEN America Announces 2017 Literary Award Winners

PEN America has announced a majority of the winners of its 2017 PEN America Literary Awards.

This year’s awards will confer over $300,000 to writers and translators across the fields of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, translation, and more. The winners of the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature, the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction, and the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay will be announced at a ceremony hosted by comedian Aasif Mandvi on March 27 at The New School in Manhattan.

See a list of the 2017 winners, announced this week, here.

2016 Nebula, Norton, and Bradbury Nominees Announced

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) has announced the nominees for the 51st Annual Nebula Awards, the Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation, and the Andre Norton Award for Outstanding Young Adult Science Fiction or Fantasy Book.

Voting will begin on March 1, and the awards will be presented during the annual Nebula Conference, which takes place from May 18–21 in Pittsburgh.

To see all the nominees, visit the SFWA website.