Jonathan Safran Foer

If you remember this year's White House Correspondent's Dinner, you weren't there. Felix Gillette, John Koblin, and Choire Sicha flood the zone in D.C..

Janet Silver is moving from Houghton Mifflin to Nan Talese's imprint at Doubleday. Leon Neyfakh checks in with with Ms. Talese who says, "I called Janet and she sent us a list of the authors she had worked with and the ones who’d said they wanted to come with her, if not immediately then eventually." That list may include Philip Roth and Jonathan Safran Foer. Plus: Islam observers on Wieseltier's Amis review; James Frey's PR Dream Team; Spitzer's bio; Nabokov's unfinished novel.  read more »

On May 1, former Houghton Mifflin publisher Janet Silver starts her new job as an editor at large at Nan Talese’s boutique literary imprint at Doubleday.

Back in January, Ms. Silver and several other editors at Houghton Mifflin were made redundant as part of the company’s merger with Harcourt.

But Ms. Silver and Ms. Talese may have the better end of the stick: The author list Ms. Silver built at Houghton, which included Philip Roth and Jonathan Safran Foer, did not play a small role in Ms. Talese’s desire to recruit her.

“I called Janet and she sent us a list of the authors she had worked with and the ones who’d said they wanted to come with her, if not immediately then eventually,” Ms. Talese said. “We ran down the financials and ... we made an agreement with her that she would stay up there in Massachusetts. It was all done in a rather good fashion.”  read more »

• Insufferably awful novelist Jonathan Safran Foer and beautifully brilliant novelist Nicole Krauss ("Is she really going out with him?/Is she really gonna take him home tonight?") have apparently bought a $6.7 million Brooklyn brownstone that should give them and their two future children a floor each.
[Gawker]
• Eater declares a deathwatch for the Russian Tea Room. (Didn't it just reopen?): "Our best guess is that the venue will morph into a very casual dining room and bar downstairs and a private events space upstairs. If that doesn't work, the building will become solely an events space."
[Eater]
• Jonathan "Matrix" Miller sees gloomy times ahead for the national housing market and the U.S. economy based on info that's emerged so far this March. But all's not bad for Mr. Miller: "On the bright side, March Madness is nearly here and my son's basketball team won our town's 3rd grade basketball championship." (Note: The Real Estate assumes UNC will go all the way. Go Heels!)
[Matrix]
• The upcoming Brooklyn Fashion Week(end) will feature 19 designers, nine tents and 40 models. We predict the event in Dumbo will be infinitely hipper than the Manhattan one in Bryant Park. That's how Brooklyn rolls.
[DumboNYC] - Tom Acitelli
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