May 3, 2013

More turnover at Granta

by

Granta is hiring.

Last week, it was announced that John Freeman is leaving his role as editor of Granta after five years at the journal to teach at Columbia University. Yesterday it came out that he isn’t the only person leaving the prestigious quarterly: deputy editor Ellah Allfrey, and art director Michael Salu have also resigned; associate editor Patrick Ryan is also leaving. What’s more, Granta will be closing its New York office.

This is quite a bit of turnover in a very short period of time, especially considering that the magazine used Freeman’s departure to crow about recent success, noting that:

The total global circulation of the magazine will be 100,000 when Japanese Granta begins publishing next March. Under his editorship, the magazine also conducted more then 300 events in over 25 countries, earned more than a dozen citations in the Best of American anthologies, and won D&AD awards for cover design.

These departures are, unfortunately, somewhat familiar. Freeman took over Granta in 2009 after the journal lost six employees, including senior editor Rosalind Porter, who was “made redundant.” Three employees followed her out the door; the other two had left abruptly earlier in the year. Granta claimed that the three employees who left shortly after Porter’s departure, Kate Gibb, Liz Jobey, and Roy Robins, “all had very different roles and are leaving for very different reasons.” There is no word yet from the journal as to why Allfrey, Salu, and Ryan are leaving, what they’re doing next, or if their exit has anything to do with Freeman’s decision to leave Granta. We’ll update this post as more information comes to light.

In other hiring/firing/departure news, Howard “I don’t know how to talk about homosexuality” Kurtz was canned by The Daily Beast after writing and saying stupid things about Jason Collins.

 

 

Alex Shephard is the director of digital media for Melville House, and a former bookseller.

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