We are pleased to share exciting news for a member of our Rucci Law Group Family: Marysue Rucci, Joe Rucci’s daughter, has been named Vice President and Editor-in-Chief of Simon & Schuster.
From the Press Release:
- Marysue Rucci has been named Vice President, Editor-in-Chief of the Simon & Schuster adult trade imprint, it was announced today by Jonathan Karp, Publisher of Simon & Schuster. Her appointment is effective April 2.
- Ms. Rucci comes to Simon & Schuster from Putnam, where since January 2010 she has served as Vice President, Editorial Director. Prior to that, she had worked at Simon & Schuster for 13 years, building a highly-regarded and wide-ranging list of novelists and nonfiction authors.
- Marysue will be the leader and architect of Simon & Schuster’s fiction list, said Jonathan Karp.She will supervise all our fiction acquisitions, build her own list of authors–both novelists and nonfiction writers — and provide counsel to our editors. Under her guidance we expect to be an industry leader, publishing novels of the highest quality and the greatest appeal. We are all delighted that Marysue is returning to Simon & Schuster and that she will now have a greater role in the management of the imprint.
- Ms. Rucci is best-known for acquiring Little Bee by Chris Cleave, one of the most acclaimed and beloved novels Simon & Schuster has published in recent years, which spent more than a year on The New York Times bestseller list and has sold over a million copies. She also discovered and edited a series of bestselling novels by Lisa Lutz, beginning with The Spellman Files. Among her many other successes are the Costa Award-winning The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney; Oxygen by Carol Cassella; the memoirs If I Am Missing or Dead by Janine Latus and The House at Sugar Beach by Helene Cooper, which was a Starbucks pick and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. She also edited numerous bestselling authors, from Dr. Hunter S. Thompson to Jeffery Deaver to Lauren Weisberger.
- At Putnam, Ms. Rucci acquired and published the bestseller If You Ask Me and Betty & Friends by actress Betty White, in addition to the novels Heads You Lose by Lisa Lutz and David Hayward, The Invisible Ones by Stef Penney, and The Song Remains the Same by Allison Winn Scotch. While working at Villard Books Ms. Rucci acquired The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler, and as an editorial assistant at Scribner acquired Deja Dead, the first book by bestselling novelist Kathy Reichs.
- I’m honored and excited to return to Simon & Schuster in the capacity of Editor in Chief, and particularly thrilled to champion the fiction list. I look forward to working with Jonathan Karp and the talented new team assembled since I left S&S, and to reconnecting with the many colleagues I already know and admire. It’s an incredible opportunity and I couldn;t be happier.
- Ms. Rucci is a graduate of Northwestern University, where she studied English and Creative Writing, and she attended the Radcliffe Publishing Course.
All of us at Rucci Law Group extend our congratulations to Marysue and wish her the best as she embarks on the next stage of her career!