Pantheon and Schocken Books will now operate independently within the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group alongside Doubleday, Knopf and Vintage Anchor, president and publisher Maya Mavjee announced yesterday. Senior vice-president and publisher Lisa Lucas, who joined the company earlier this year, will continue to report to Mavjee directly.

Mavjee said: "Over the past few months, it has become clear that in order to ensure these imprints' legacy, development, and advancement, they must stand as an equal and fourth pillar in the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group."

Lisa Lucas

Senior editor Deb Garrison, Schocken editorial director Altie Karper and senior editor Shelley Wanger will serve as the "editorial foundation" for the imprints going forward, while executive editor Naomi Gibbs, senior editor Maria Goldverg and editorial director Denise Oswald will now report to Lucas. Michiko Clark, director of Pantheon publicity, and Julianne Clancy, lead associate director of marketing, will continue to guide the imprints' marketing efforts. Lucas will also look to hire new editorial positions focusing on nonfiction and graphic novels.

"We couldn't be prouder to have the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to strengthen, reinvigorate and revitalize such iconic imprints," Lucas said, "to retain the sterling, nearly-eighty-year-old legacy, while adding bold, modern, radical voices for a new generation of Pantheon and Schocken Books readers."

Bookery Manchester, Manchester, N.H., has handed over management of its café to Tom Puskarich, who owns a variety of food businesses, including Restoration Café and Good and Planty, Manchester Inklink reported. The store had managed the café since it opened in 2018.

Bookery owner Liz Hitchcock said that Puskarich's "level of food is exactly where I want to be. A little bit nicer than your typical sub shop but also quick and easy to grab... like a sub shop." She said the café's quality had been inconsistent, adding, "There's been many iterations on it, and it's been kinda one of the sticky parts. Running a restaurant is extremely hard."

The goal is to return to Hitchcock's original idea of an "elevated" café with specialty items like fresh-baked donuts, soups and artisanal breads and fewer things like barbecue chicken sandwiches and paninis.

Puskarich said the goal is to make the café a destination to drive incidental traffic for the bookstore, just as the bookstore drives traffic for the cafe. "We wanted to create a destination sort of like 'I want to come to this cafe because it has the best X, Y and Z,' " he added.

The Association of University Presses (AUPresses) has chosen "Keep UP" as the theme for the 10th annual University Press Week, which will run from Monday, November 8, through Friday, November 12. 

The theme was chosen to reflect the ways university presses have worked to "explore new ways to reach readers, amplify ideas, and sustain scholarly communities while remaining steadfast in their commitment to advancing knowledge" over the past 10 years. Members of AUPresses have put together a "Keep UP Gallery" and reading list featuring books, journals, open access platforms, podcasts and more. Most of the titles on the reading list can be found on the AUPresses Bookshop.org page.

The university press community will host online celebrations of this year's theme via a blog tour, and there will be a virtual panel discussion about the strengths and challenges of university press publishing scheduled for Wednesday, November 10. Organized by Seminary Co-op in Chicago, Ill., the panel will feature author Deesha Philyaw, University of North Carolina Press publisher John Shere, bookseller Stephen Sparks (co-owner of Point Reyes Books, Point Reyes, Calif.) and Alena Jones, Seminary Co-op's director of buying and content.

"The inaugural theme of University Press Week back in 2012 was ‘Contributing to an Informed Society," said AUPresses executive director Peter Berkery. "In the ten years since, the university press community has stayed true to this goal, keeping up the highest standards of scholarship and championing the power of ideas.”

Lisa Bayer, director of the University of Georgia Press and AUPresses president, said: "As the world changes, so do university presses, adapting subject areas, author lists, and publishing know-how to grow into an ever more diverse, ever more global community. An informed society is as important as ever, and we are proud to honor the forward-thinking work that has made university presses leaders in their fields and a force to keep up with.”

The full gallery and reading list can be found here.

Her position as a former bookseller and now an integral part of an indie press made Cristina Rodriguez the ideal moderator for MPIBA FallCon's Indies for Indies Lunch and Working with Indie Presses panel.

Pictured: (l.-r.): Cristina Rodriguez, Terrie Akers, Kalen Landow, Anna Hjortsberg.

It was a roll-up-your-sleeves discussion about being mindful of using one's book budgets to support independent presses, how to merchandise indie titles to secure sales, and how to connect indie booksellers with indie presses in meaningful ways.

Rodriguez, formerly the manager and buyer at Deep Vellum Bookstore, Dallas, Tex., and now marketing and sales director at A Public Space (as well as an MPIBA board member), asked some basic questions: If you want to make this your career, how do you do that in a sustainable way? How do you represent authors of color? How are you supporting indie presses; where do you spend your dollars? As a bookseller, Rodriguez asked small presses for their "Top 25" to help her merchandise them in the store. Kalen Landow, sales director at Microcosm Publishing (which has had great success with Danny Caine's How to Resist Amazon and Why), keeps Microcosm's "Top 100 Sellers" on Edelweiss for easy reference.

Anna Hjortsberg, manager of Country Bookshelf in Bozeman, Mont., said she taps her PGW and Consortium sales reps to find out what's coming from smaller presses. She'll place a "Meet Grove Press" or "Meet Tin House" display next to her New York Times bestsellers table, to bring these publishers to the attention of customers. Landow noted that WORD Bookstore in Brooklyn, N.Y., merchandises Microcosm books next to zines and greeting cards; she also emphasized that zines should be displayed face-out to minimize damage through slippage. Terrie Akers, marketing director of Other Press, returns the favor to supportive indie booksellers with a New York Times ad featuring quotes from independents about new titles. Hjortsberg, anticipating supply-chain issues this holiday season, is creating a list of great indie gift books as alternatives to the Big Five publishers' titles; one of her favorites is Ben Hopkins's Cathedral (Europa Editions), newly released in paperback.

Hjortsberg stressed the importance of getting indie ARCs in "the right hands," since the store has greatly scaled back author events from the "before times" (pre-pandemic) and these books often require handselling. Akers noted that Kelly Justice, owner of Fountain Books in Richmond, Va., has a dedicated place in her galley room for indie ARCs and encourages staff to take them; Akers also urged booksellers (a number of times) to contact her directly.

Rodriguez, with Jisu Kim at Feminist Press, hosts a "Galley Club," for which they send out indie ARCs and invite the author and editor to discuss the book with booksellers. As a perk, Rodriguez added, "Then you'll know other booksellers when you get to Winter Institute."

Akers also invited booksellers to expand their networks internationally. The brainchild of Michael Reynolds, editor-in-chief of Europa Editions, Books Across Borders (formerly Bookselling Without Borders) offers a fellowship for booksellers to attend international book fairs (past fairs include Frankfurt, Turin, Istanbul, Bologna and Jaipur). The registration period will open at Winter Institute in Cincinnati, Ohio, in February.

In her parting words, Rodriguez reminded attendees, "Think thoughtfully of what you're carrying and what you're buying." --Jennifer M. Brown

Steve Wong

Steven Wong, who helped found Everybody's Bookstore in San Francisco Manilatown and worked for other Bay Area booksellers, died August 23. He was 73. In 1968, he entered UC Berkeley, where he took part in the movement against the Vietnam War. With other student activists he helped to provide free tutoring for immigrant children, self-empowerment for the elderly and solidarity with garment workers' struggles in San Francisco's Chinatown. On campus Wong was a member of the Asian-American Political Alliance, which was part of the Third World Liberation Front--the organization that led the 1969 student strike at Berkeley, which won the establishment of ethnic studies departments in the UC system. He was one of the first instructors of Asian American studies at Berkeley and a frequent guest speaker in college classes until 2020.

After graduating in 1970, Wong was instrumental in the founding--and often staffing--of Everybody's Bookstore in San Francisco Manilatown, one of the first Asian-American bookstore in the U.S. He also helped to establish two other organizations in Chinatown: the Asian Community Center and Wei Min She (Organization for the People), which had a focus on labor, housing and especially free speech rights. 

Wong always loved books, reading and learning. He continued to work as a bookseller for several decades, primarily at Books, Inc. and Stacey's in San Francisco, where many of his customers became his friends. 

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Jennifer Pell

Canadian bookseller Jennifer Pell, who spent more than 50 years working at Fred Wade Bookshop, her family's store in Halifax, N.S., has died. She was 90. The Halifax Courier reported that she took over the business on Rawson Street in the early 1960s and was in her 80s when she retired and the popular shop closed in 2013.

Her father, Fred Wade, ran what was originally a lending library in Rawson Street, and Pell "started work there in the early 1960s and it became a bookshop and stationers after they bought the building next door and expanded," the Courier noted.

"She was devoted and dedicated to the shop and treated all her customers like firm friends," said her daughter Caroline, who also worked in the shop. "She was very, very sociable, very active and extremely good with people. She loved to entertain and loved to go on holiday."

Ward Tefft with WonTon

Used bookstore Chop Suey Books, Richmond, Va., has changed hands, as founder Ward Tefft sold the store to longtime customers Berkley and Chris McDaniel, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported. While the building, which Tefft owns, is not part of the sale, store cat WonTon is included.

WonTon has been a resident of Chop Suey Books since 2008 and is depicted in some of the murals in the store.

"It's Tuesday, and that means another #NewReleasePupDay! Sir Benedict is sporting his plaid bowtie and waiting for fall temperatures to hit Houston," Murder by the Book, Houston, Tex., posted. 

The Next Page Books & Coffee in Calgary, Canada, found a Little Brown Myotis bat sleeping on its front door, CTV News Calgary reported. The bat was roosting in an open location because it was too cold to fly, and the bookstore team put a sign on the front door requesting that shoppers open the door carefully so as not to disturb it. The Alberta Institute for Wildlife Conservation later rescued the bat, and found it to be in good health.

Shae McDaniel has joined Algonquin Young Readers as marketing manager. She was most recently digital marketing assistant manager for HarperCollins Children's Books.

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In the Scholastic trade publishing division:

Zakiya Jamal has been promoted to senior manager, social media. She was previously manager.

Shannon Pender has been promoted to associate marketing manager, young adult. She was previously marketing associate.

Jordana Kulak has been promoted to publicist. She was previously associate publicist.

Olivia Blomstrom has joined Scholastic as trade planner, frontlist planning. She was previously a special education paraprofessional with Wyckoff Public Schools.

Jordin Streeter has joined Scholastic as associate marketing manager for middle grade. She was previously marketing coordinator at Macmillan Children's Books.

Violets Are Blue by Barbara Dee (Aladdin).

Today:
NPR's Here & Now: Ron Howard and Clint Howard, authors of The Boys: A Memoir of Hollywood and Family (Morrow, $28.99, 9780063065246).

Tomorrow:
Tamron Hall: Amanda Gorman, author of Change Sings: A Children's Anthem (Viking, $18.99, 9780593203224).

Kelly Clarkson Show: Soman Chainani, author of Beasts and Beauty: Dangerous Tales (‎HarperCollins, $17.99, 9780062652638).

Late Show with Stephen Colbert repeat: Phoebe Robinson, author of Please Don't Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes: Essays (Tiny Reparations Books, $27, 9780593184905).

Book TV airs on C-Span 2 this weekend from 8 a.m. Saturday to 8 a.m. Monday and focuses on political and historical books as well as the book industry. The following are highlights for this coming weekend. For more information, go to Book TV's website.

Saturday, October 16
8 a.m. Henry Louis Gates Jr., author of Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow (Penguin Books, $20, 9780525559559). (Re-airs Saturday at 8 p.m.)

3:30 p.m. Rebecca Frankel, author of Into the Forest: A Holocaust Story of Survival, Triumph, and Love (St. Martin's Press, $28.99, 9781250267641). (Re-airs Sunday at 3:30 a.m.)

Sunday, October 17
10 a.m. Ben Nelson, author of Death of the Senate: My Front Row Seat to the Demise of the World's Greatest Deliberative Body (Potomac Books, $34.95, 9781640124943). (Re-airs Sunday at 10 p.m.)

2 p.m. Nate Powell, author of Save It for Later: Promises, Protest, and Parenthood (Abrams, $24.99, 9781419749124), and John Woodrow Cox, author of Children Under Fire: An American Crisis (‎Ecco, $28.99, 9780062883933), at the virtual San Diego Union-Tribune Festival of Books.

2:29 p.m. Tim Harford, author of The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics (Riverhead, $28, 9780593084595), and Jordan Ellenberg, author of Shape: The Hidden Geometry of Information, Biology, Strategy, Democracy, and Everything Else (Penguin Press, $28, 9781984879059), at the San Diego Union-Tribune Festival of Books.

3:02 p.m. Samantha Montano, author of Disasterology: Dispatches from the Frontlines of the Climate Crisis (Park Row, $28.99, 9780778311034), and Kim McCoy, co-author of Waves and Beaches: The Powerful Dynamics of Sea and Coast (Patagonia, $29.95, ‎ 9781938340956), at the San Diego Union-Tribune Festival of Books.

3:35 p.m. Tanya Selvaratnam, author of Assume Nothing: A Story of Intimate Violence (Harper, $28.99, 9780063059900), and Nadia Owusu, author of Aftershocks: A Memoir (Simon & Schuster, $17, 9781982111236), at the San Diego Union-Tribune Festival of Books.

4:30 p.m. Stephen Breyer, author of The Authority of the Court and the Peril of Politics (Harvard University Press, $19.95, 9780674269361).

6 p.m. Amy Argetsinger, author of There She Was: The Secret History of Miss America (Atria/One Signal, $28, 9781982123390).

6:55 p.m. Evan Osnos, author of Wildland: The Making of America's Fury (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $30, 9780374286675).

The shortlist has been unveiled for the 2021 Richell Prize for Emerging Writers, awarded in memory of Hachette Australia's former CEO Matt Richell, who died in a surfing accident in 2014. The winner, who will be named November 4, receives A$10,000 (about US$7,290), along with a 12-month mentorship with one of Hachette Australia's publishers. Hachette Australia will work with the winning writer to develop their manuscript with first option to consider the finished work and shortlisted entries for publication. This year's finalists are:

Odette Des Forges for Chasing Sadie
Kay Harrison for Flip the Bird
Simone Jordan for Tell Her She's Dreamin'
Jessica Kirkness for A Sense of You
Ben Randall for Snakehead

Selected new titles appearing next Tuesday, October 19:

Oh William!: A Novel by Elizabeth Strout (Random House, $27, 9780812989434) is the third novel starring Lucy Barton, in which she reflects on her ex-husband.

Over My Dead Body: A Novel by Jeffrey Archer (HarperCollins, $28.99, 9780008476373) continues the William Warwick thriller series.

A Line to Kill: A Novel by Anthony Horowitz (‎Harper, $27.99, 9780062938169) is the third literary mystery with detectives Hawthorne and Horowitz.

Welcome to Dunder Mifflin: The Ultimate Oral History of The Office by Brian Baumgartner and Ben Silverman (Custom House, $29.99, 9780063082199) is based on interviews with the cast and crew, and includes 100 behind-the-scenes photos.

The Pioneer Woman Cooks--Super Easy!: 120 Shortcut Recipes for Dinners, Desserts, and More by Ree Drummond (Morrow, $29.99, 9780062962768) shares recipes from a cooking show host.

Everybody in the Red Brick Building by Anne Wynter, illus. by Oge Mora (HarperCollins/Balzer + Bray, $17.99, 9780062865762) is a bedtime picture book that takes place in a noisy city.

African Icons: Ten People Who Shaped History by Tracey Baptiste (Algonquin, $19.95, 9781616209001) is a middle-grade piece of nonfiction about 10 Africans who changed the world.

From last week's Indie bestseller lists, available at IndieBound.org, here are the recommended titles, which are also Indie Next Great Reads:

Hardcover
Dare to Know by James Kennedy (Quirk Books, $22.99, 9781683692607). "A company can tell you with 100% accuracy when you are going to die. But what happens when you live beyond your expiration date? As you read Dare to Know, your sense of reality will melt away." --Bob Lingle, Off the Beaten Path Bookstore, Lakewood, N.Y.

The Archer by Shruti Swamy (Algonquin, $26.95, 9781616209902). "The Archer is the story of a young Indian woman who longs to be a classical dancer--to feel that rhythm, to have that as her life focus--yet is continually buffeted by her choices and those made for her." --Becky Milner, Vintage Books, Vancouver, Wash.

Paperback
A Lot Like Adiós by Alexis Daria (Avon, $15.99, 9780062959966). "A Lot Like Adiós is a heartfelt exploration of first love and mature love, proof positive that, with an open heart and some hard emotional work, you can absolutely go home again." --Leah Grover, Bards Alley, Vienna, Va.

For Ages 3 to 6
It’s OK, Slow Lizard by Yeorim Yoon, illus. by Jian Kim, trans. by Chi-Young Kim (Yonder, $18.95, 9781632062772). "Delightful, whimsical, and sweet, Slow Lizard is a calm and observant little creature, and he’s great at helping his friends calm down and feel better. I would love to see more of Slow Lizard and his friends." --Andrew King, Secret Garden Bookshop, Seattle, Wash.

For Ages 9 to 12: An Indies Introduce Title
Barefoot Dreams of Petra Luna by Alda P. Dobbs (Sourcebooks, $17.99, 9781728234656). "Readers will be drawn into the Mexican Revolution as they follow Petra and her family through a world of Federales and revolucionarias. An engaging, action-packed, and mighty fine story!" --Kim Brock, Joseph-Beth Booksellers, Cincinnati, Ohio

For Teen Readers
Call Me Athena: Girl from Detroit by Colby Cedar Smith (Andrews McMeel, $21.99, 9781524865603). "This story of an immigrant girl growing up in Detroit in the 1930s hits every mark. Woven into the story are her parents' histories and all the love and loss the family has faced. It will tug your heartstrings." --Izzy Stringham, Bookbinders Basalt, Basalt, Colo.

[Many thanks to IndieBound and the ABA!]

With The Everybody Ensemble: Donkeys, Essays, and Other Pandemoniums, Amy Leach (Things That Are) takes her readers on a playful, rigorous, mind-bending romp through human nature, the natural world, spirituality and more. Her perfectly singular voice sings the most surprising notes in an imaginative blend of silliness and seriousness.

This sophomore collection of 23 essays opens with its title offering, in which the narrator welcomes all 20 quintillion animals to the Everybody Ensemble. How will they be arranged and organized? What songs will they perform? Leach glories in lists of the unlikely, the weird and the underappreciated: "speckled and plain, perfect and imperfect, indigo-feathered, green-skinned, orange-toed, squashed of face, cracked of shell, miniature of heart, young as ducklings, old as hills, everybody raise your sweet and scrapey, bangy, twangy, sundry, snorty voices." This embrace of enormous, diverse multiplicity serves as appropriate introduction to an ecstatic exploration of "everybodyism."

Leach employs a huge range of rhetorical devices while retaining a sense of whimsy and plain fun. Her genius perhaps shows best in her selection of the singular, startlingly unexpected detail. Adept as she is at wordplay, Leach's writing goes much deeper than that, wondering and speculating at larger questions. In "The Wanderer," she considers how to critique the extravaganza show called Earth, "already in production for five million years now" but unfinished. The artist of this show has strengths (facility and versatility), but "imagination unchecked can result in a mishmash." If only "we could just establish the genre, whether this is supposed to be comedy or tragedy or romance or what," we could make sense of the effort. Don't be misled by her joyful absurdity or wit with words: Leach is deadly serious in her questioning of the cosmos, Earth's composer and whether "even with all the troubles of our time, maybe it can still be fun to be a frog."

"O Latitudo" ponders the imagined choice of a supervolcano: to erupt or to self-suppress, "consequently composing a gassy, burpy, muddy Ode to Joy." "In Lieu of a Walrus" offers a list of writers to whom one might turn when the first-choice interlocuter is unavailable, including Hafiz, Ovid and God. "Green Man" honors the mesquite tree, loved by few, who has been given "the freedom to dig his own disputable way." "Beasts in the Margins" considers the more incongruous illustrations of 14th-century books of psalms: "Who let the monsters into the psalter?" These and other essays range widely in subject matter but accrue to a meaningful whole. Leach is smart, effervescent, earnest and funny. Her voice is perfectly unmistakable, her themes expansive; her prose glitters. The Everybody Ensemble is a revelation. --Julia Kastner, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

Shelf Talker: Amy Leach's signature playful style, joyful humor and wise questioning of the universe delight and fascinate in these 23 essays, her second such collection.