Announcing Broadside: Expert Literary PR

Announcing BROADSIDE: Expert Literary PR

A new literary publicity collaboration between

Kimberly Burns, Whitney Peeling, and Michael Taeckens

New York (May 21, 2015) – Literary publicists Kimberly Burns, Whitney Peeling, and Michael Taeckens announce the formation of their new full-service publicity group, BROADSIDE: Expert Literary PR.

With over fifty years of combined experience working with the finest imprints and authors, and decades of mutual professional admiration, Burns, Peeling, and Taeckens have united to elevate and empower today’s top writers and thinkers.

BROADSIDE will specialize in publicity and marketing for publisher-backed literary fiction and narrative nonfiction, as well as literary and mission-driven organizations and nonprofits.

“The three of us are overjoyed to be working together in this official capacity,” says Taeckens. “We each have a distinct style and set of interests, as well as varying areas of expertise, that complement each other in the best of ways.”

“With the media landscape changing so quickly, it makes perfect sense for Michael, Whitney, and me to team up,” says Burns. “All of our current and future clients will benefit from our collective experience, brainstorming, and network of contacts.”

“All three of us have countless successful campaigns under our belts,” notes Peeling, “and we believe collaboration always trumps competition. When we found the name BROADSIDE—which, among other things, means the ‘simultaneous firing of all guns from one side of a ship’—we knew it defined our approach.”

The books that Burns, Peeling, and Taeckens have worked on have regularly landed on bestseller lists; won Pulitzer Prizes, National Book Awards, and National Book Critics Circle Awards; moved and shaped the literary landscape; and catalyzed social movements. In addition to years executing exceptional campaigns independently, the BROADSIDE team has in-house experience at Alfred A. Knopf, Algonquin Books, Graywolf Press, Houghton Mifflin, W. W. Norton, Pantheon Books, The Penguin Press, PublicAffairs, Random House, and Vintage Books.

Notable in-house campaigns they’ve led include: Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation; Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants; Zadie Smith’s White Teeth; Leslie Jamison’s The Empathy Exams; Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus’ Creating a World Without Poverty; W. G. Sebald’s Austerlitz; Amy Stewart’s Wicked Plants; Adam Gopnik’s Paris to the Moon; and Charles Morris’ The Trillion Dollar Meltdown, among many others.

Notable campaigns they’ve led independently include: Elizabeth Kolbert’s Pulitzer Prize–winning The Sixth Extinction; novels by Booker Prize–winning author Salman Rushdie; Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman’s international bestseller Thinking, Fast and Slow; New York Times bestselling novels by Sara Gruen and Tim Johnston; Los Angeles Times columnist Meghan Daum’s The Unspeakable; Vikram Chandra’s NBCC-nominated Geek Sublime; New York Times investigative journalist James Risen’s national bestseller Pay Any Price; and publicity campaigns for The American Booksellers Association, The Moth, The Kirkus Prize, and The Whiting Foundation.

Broadside blends independence with collaboration. Clients can choose to hire one, two, or all three members for a campaign—although every project benefits from Broadside’s collective experience, brainstorming, and network of contacts. All three Broadside partners handle publicity campaigns; Michael Taeckens also handles all aspects of marketing, web design, and social media.

Further information on BROADSIDE and Burns, Peeling, and Taeckens can be found at broadsidepr.com.

Contact: ahoy@broadsidepr.com

Follow on Twitter @BroadsidePR & Instagram: @Broadside_PR

BROADSIDE logo designed by Ben Schott

Kimberly Burns has led literary publicity campaigns for Ann Beattie, Meghan Daum, AM Homes, Yiyun Li, Natalie Merchant, Molly Ringwald, Jon Ronson, Salman Rushdie, and Marisa Silver, as well as for The Moth, NYU, The Story Prize, PEN World Voices Festival, The 92^nd St Y/Unterberg Poetry Center, The New Yorker Festival, and Granta. Before starting her own company in 2003, she worked at Knopf, Random House, Pantheon, and The Penguin Press – where she led campaigns for, among others, Amy Bloom/A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You, Zadie Smith/White Teeth, WG Sebald/Austerlitz, and Adam Gopnik/Paris to the Moon. She is proud to serve on the board of directors of the Housing Works Bookstore and the Happy Ending Music & Reading Series, and as a consultant for Creative Capital’s Literature Grantees.

Whitney Peeling has seventeen years of experience in nonfiction book publicity. Before starting her own company in 2010, she worked at Houghton Mifflin, W.W. Norton, and PublicAffairs. As an independent publicist she has led campaigns for emerging and established authors including bestsellers Daniel Kahneman/Thinking, Fast and Slow, Adam Grant/Give and Take, and Elizabeth Kolbert/The Sixth Extinction. Clients include publishers such as Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Perseus Books Group, PublicAffairs, W.W. Norton, Henry Holt & Company, Wharton Digital Press, and mission-driven organizations like The Whiting Foundation, The New Girls’ Network (to promote What Works for Women at Work by Joan C. Williams), and Partners in Health (to promote To Repair the World by co-founder Paul Farmer).

Michael Taeckens has led publicity and marketing campaigns for the American Booksellers Association, Vikram Chandra, Tim Johnston, Sara Gruen, and Edward Carey, among others. Before starting his own company he was Marketing Director at Graywolf Press, where he worked on Leslie Jamison’s New York Times bestseller The Empathy Exams, and for twelve years he was Publicity Director at Algonquin Books, where he led the campaigns for Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie/Purple Hibiscus, Sara Gruen/Water for Elephants, Robert Goolrick/A Reliable Wife, and Amy Stewart/Flower Confidential and Wicked Plants. He also launched and managed Algonquin’s social media presence, growing its Twitter fan base to over 110,000 followers, and created the “Algonquin Book Club,” pairing Stephen King, Edwidge Danticat, Anne Lamott, Judy Blume, and others with Algonquin authors for live events. Michael pens the “Reviewers & Critics” column for Poets & Writers.

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