Balzer and Bray to Launch New Children’s Imprint at HC
By Rachel Deahl -- Publishers Weekly, 4/9/2008 1:27:00 PM
Hyperion has lost two more execs to HarperCollins. After last week’s big news that Hyperion adult group founder Bob Miller was defecting to launch a new imprint at HC, Donna Bray and Alessandra Balzer, editorial director and executive editor at Hyperion Books for Children, respectively, have been lured away by Harper as well. The two, who have worked together for 12 years, will start their own eponymous imprint, called Balzer & Bray, beginning in May.
The new imprint, which is slated to launch in fall 2009, will be releasing picture books through YA titles; no figure has been set for the first list. Bray and Balzer told PW that the list will reflect the same work they’ve been doing at
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Bray and Balzer’s departure follows another notable loss in the Hyperion children’s department: Brenda Bowen left the company last May, and joined HC. (Bowen, who had been v-p, editor-in-chief and associate publisher of Global Books, also has her own imprint, The Bowen Press.)
Jeanne Mosure, senior v-p and publisher of Global Children’s Books, Disney
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Mosure also added that a name change is in the works. Hyperion, long under the Disney Group, will now be called Disney-Hyperion. The change, which will be effective by January 2009, allows, according to director of publicity Jennifer Levine, for a way to better associate the two brands together. “The company is really proud of Hyperion and wanted to associate it more closely with Disney,” she said.
