Book Notes

Random House

confirms more layoffs

Spokesmen for two newly formed divisions of Random House Inc. said there have been layoffs as the publishing giant continued its consolidation announced last December.

The Crown Publishing Group, where authors include President-elect Barack Obama, and the Knopf Doubleday Group, which publishes Toni Morrison and Anne Rice among others, separately announced a wave of promotions and personnel changes and confirmed that some employees had been cut.

Spokesmen Paul Bogaards of Knopf and David Drake of Crown each said there had been a small number of layoffs across various departments, following reductions at Random House announced last fall and at the end of last year, not long after the publisher merged its divisions from five into three. Random House has also frozen pensions for current employees and eliminated them for future hires.

Several publishers have announced layoffs and/or wage freezes in the past two months, including Macmillan, HarperCollins and Simon and Schuster.

Library group looks into ‘Time Traveler’s’

The Wednesday Night Book Group will meet this week at 7 p.m. at the Northside Library.

The group will discuss “Time Traveler’s Wife” by Audrey Niffeneggar.

The Jefferson-Madison Regional Library also is starting its Documentary Film Series on Thursday at the Central Branch.

For more information, visit http://jmrl.org.

Giovanni to speak

at art conference

Virginia Tech poet Nikki Giovanni will be the keynote speaker at the ArtWorks for Virginia 2009 conference Jan. 28 in Richmond. For more details, visit VaforArts.org.

From staff and wire reports