Simon & Schuster Publisher Talks Race, Trump and the Pandemic

Bob Woodward’s “Rage,” Mary Trump’s “Too Much and Never Enough” and John Bolton’s “The Room Where It Happened,” three of the biggest books of Donald Trump’s presidency, arrived just as Dana Canedy was settling into her new role as senior vice president and publisher of Simon & Schuster’s namesake imprint. She is the first Black person to hold this position in the publishing powerhouse’s 96 years. Canedy spent 20 years at the New York Times, writing about terrorism, law enforcement, business and finance. She was part of a team that won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting for a series on race.

In 2017, Canedy, 55, was named administrator of the Pulitzers, assessing the best of journalism, letters and the arts. That is until Simon & Schuster called earlier this year. The publisher releases more than 2,000 titles annually and its imprints have won 56 Pulitzers, numerous National Book Awards and many other prizes. Among the other books it published this year are Sean Hannity’s “Live Free or Die,” Brian Stelter’s “Hoax” and Susan Rice’s “Tough Love.”