Publishers Lunch

Eamon Dolan will
join Simon & Schuster Publishing Group as vice president and executive
editor starting October 1. Dolan was most recently with Houghton Mifflin
Harcourt, where he ran his own imprint, Eamon Dolan Books, which was shut
down in July. Simon & Schuster president and publisher Jonathan Karp
says, "Eamon will continue to do what he has done so brilliantly for
years: Identify, edit, and publish some of the best writers and thinkers in the
culture – authors whose works are relevant to understanding our times and how
they are changing, and capable of being just as meaningful in the future as
they are today."

Tamar Brazis
will join Viking Children's as editorial director, picture books, reporting to
Ken Wright. She will develop her own list of picture books and work more
broadly on expanding the imprint's picture book list. She was editorial
director at Abrams Children's, where she worked for nearly 15 years. Wright
says: "I have followed Tamar's career from the sidelines for years and
hoped for many of them that she and I would one day work together. I am really
very excited that Tamar will bring her immense talent and her instinct for what
makes great commercial and literary picture books to Viking and Penguin Young
Readers."

Alice Tassel has
been promoted to director of the French Publishers' Agency in New York. Lucinda Karter is
leaving to become a full time agent with the Jennifer Lyons Literary Agency.

Devin Ross
has been promoted to literary agent at New Leaf Literary & Media.

Longtime Reed Exhibitions executive, senior vp Ed Several , who led the energetic
"reimagined" Book Expo that nonetheless drew fewer booksellers and
librarians, is leaving the company in October for another job after 14 years
with the company. Event manager Jenny
Martin "will be stepping into the leadership role for the
foreseeable future" at Book Expo. Reed Pop Global president Lance
Fensterman and vp Michael Kisken will
continue to oversee the event.


At Open Road, Megan Buckman has
been promoted to director of production.


Awards
Editor and publisher Tim Duggan will receive
the Biographers International Organization's editorial excellence award.

The National Book Foundation will award Isabel
Allende with its Medal for Distinguished Contribution to
American Letters, a lifetime achievement award. Allende is the author of The House of Spirits and
22 other titles, as well as a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom
and the Lifetime Achievement Award from PEN America. NBF board of directors
chairman David Steinberger says, "Able to forge profoundly emotional
connections with readers around the world, Isabel Allende has offered
generations of fans multilayered and deeply felt narratives that illuminate the
rich lives and histories of her characters. Allende pulls from her own
experiences to offer a global audience access to geographically and culturally
specific stories that might otherwise never reach them." Luis Alberto
Urrea will present Allende the award at the NBA ceremony on November 14.