Texas Book Festival literary director Clay Smith has been named the new features editor at Kirkus Media.
Smith will expand the features section at the literary outlet, adding “more reported articles about writers and reading trends.” He had worked at the Texas Book Festival since 2005, booking hundreds of writers, including Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Salman Rushdie, Sandra Cisneros and Amy Sedaris.
Here’s more from the release: “he wrote for Publishers Weekly, indiewire.com, and Newsday, among others. He has recently written for The Daily Beast, Elle Décor, and Newsday. While at the Texas Book Festival, Smith worked closely with small and large publishers to create a diverse program of national and Texas writers. With the participation of the Litquake Foundation and other partners, he added Lit Crawl Austin to the Festival’s program and grew sales of books during the two-day weekend.”