Jason Rekulak

Quirk Books has announced its "Looking for Love" fiction contest and invites writers to submit unpublished novel-length manuscripts containing a love story. The prize is publication by Quirk Books and a $10,000 advance against royalties.

Quirk Books associate publisher and creative director Jason Rekulak has been promoted to publisher, and vice president Brett Cohen has been promoted to president, effective immediately.

Both Rekulak and Cohen have been key members since joining Quirk. During his 13-year tenure, Rekulak has acquired and/or conceived some of the company’s most successful books, including the international sensation Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, the #1 New York Times best seller Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, and the Edgar® Award winning Last Policeman. Most recently, he launched Quirk into the middle-grade fiction genre with the Tales from Lovecraft Middle School series and Nick & Tesla’s High-Voltage Danger Lab, an upcoming BEA Middle Grade Editors’ Buzz selection. As publisher, Rekulak will continue to be primarily responsible for Quirk’s varied list, overseeing acquisitions, editorial, and design.

Amid the gussied up romances, male action fables and screenplay-bound interpersonal dramas making up The New York Times’ trade fiction best-seller list, one book stands out like a corpse at a wedding. It’s called “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies,” currently the only book on the list to combine gory scenes of zombie mayhem with the romantic exploits of a beloved Victorian-era literary heroine. Nothing in the book world in recent months has made the kind of splash (or should we say, splatter) that this title has, from the frantic Internet buzz greeting the announcement in February of its publication to the huge sales following its release this spring. The book has even been added to the curriculum at several university English departments.