23July 2009

Thursday Industry News:

Margaret Halton is returning to the agency side of the business after work on an interim basis as adult rights director for Pan Macmillan. She is joining Rogers, Coleridge and White part-time, providing maternity cover for Laurence Laluyaux, the Bookseller reports. Previously Halton was foreign rights director at ICM’s UK office.

Nancy Yost is leaving Lowenstein-Yost Associates Inc. to start up her own literary agency. She may be reached at nancy@nyliterary.com.

Literary agents Serafina Clarke and Brie Burkeman have combined their two companies to establish Brie Burkeman & Serafina Clarke Ltd., specializing in high quality commercial writing across all mediums.

Bleak House founder Benjamin Leroy and his colleague there Alison Janssen are leaving the crime and literary fiction publisher to start a new house, Tyrus Books. Leroy is the publisher, and Janssen is senior editor (and Donna Bagdasarian’s recent new literary management agency Publication Riot Group is handling rights.)

Ruth Katcher has joined Egmont USA as editor-at-large. Most recently she was an executive editor at Harper Children’s.

This is so sad:

Portland, OR-area bookseller Stephanie Griffin closed her store Twenty-third Avenue Books in January and then became homeless. “Startled neighbors discovered this in June” as “Griffin had started panhandling outside her old store,” Willamette Week writes. Neighbors have set up a relief fund:

Donations can be made to Stephanie Griffin Fund, c/o Glenda Magistrale, Consolidated Federal Credit Union, 2021 NE Sandy Blvd., Portland, OR 97232

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