Workman Publishing has announced that Elise Howard, founding publisher of the Algonquin Young Readers imprint, will retire on May 1. Stacy Lellos, who was recently named publisher of Workman Children’s, will take on the added role of AYR publisher, effective May 2. Lellos will continue to report to senior v-p and Workman publisher Dan Reynolds.
Prior to joining Algonquin, Howard was senior v-p and associate publisher at HarperCollins Children’s Books. In 2011, she was brought on as founding editor and publisher of AYR by Workman founder Peter Workman and former Algonquin publisher Elisabeth Scharlatt, in order to reach young readers through the launch of the new children’s imprint. Howard published her first AYR list in fall 2013 and, over the course of her 11 years at the imprint, she edited such titles as the 2017 Newbery Medal-winning The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill.
Reynolds said in a statement, “Under Elise’s direction, AYR books have won Lambda, Publishing Triangle, Amelia Bloomer, Carter Woodson, Edgar Allan Poe, Rainbow List, Schneider Family, NYPL, CPL, Bank Street, Horn Book Fanfare, Kirkus, SLJ, Booklist, and PW Best of the Year awards. It is an amazing achievement to build an imprint from scratch; these accolades only reinforce the commitment to quality, depth of experience, instincts about her readers, and belief that books can change people and the world that Elise brought to her work.”
Lellos said, “The types of books Algonquin Young Readers publishes will be a natural complement to the types of children’s books Workman publishes, and we’re excited about what it will mean to leverage Workman’s extraordinary strength in the trade and curriculum markets to help take AYR to a new level. I spent much of my career in the world of children’s fiction, and I’m thrilled to shepherd AYR’s storytelling, which helps children understand the world and the many ways to be part of and even shape it.”
