Newman Communications, the savior of many a publicist and author thanks to their radio tours, threw their biannual cocktail party at yet another swank bar for the book publicists that keep them in the red at Latitude last night on the edge of Hell's Kitchen in NYC. All the fun young publicists from houses around the city were there in droves to cut the rug, quaff some spirits, enjoy the beef satay and mingle.

It was also gossip haven during the evening and this Galleycat heard from more than one person that Harcourt just slashed their publicity dept by 2/3's, downsizing (love that euphemism) their director Michelle Blankenship, Senior publicist Sarah Melnyk (HR Dept's take note!) and two assistants as of tomorrow.

Houghton's statement on the latest round of layoffs, more pics, a Flounders sighting, and Man Vs Wild after the jump.

Photo: Newman Com from Left to Right- Tess Woods, Elise Bogdan, Ken Howell Rachel Rausch, David Ratner, Bob Newman, Tiffany Berryman, Dave Lindquist.

I reached out to Lori Glazer, Exec Director of Publicity to see what Houghton's official statement was. She replied "As we form a single company and a single, merged adult list, the new Houghton Mifflin Harcourt publicity department is fully staffed, strong and larger than either company had before. As in other departments, a few positions have been eliminated in the integration process."

Alexandra Ramstrum and Allison McGeehon from Hyperion, publisher of the upcoming Man Vs Wild book by Bear Grylls. I wish I could have found the Collins publicist for Survivorman Les Stroud's book coming out this fall and pit them against each other in a survival experiment on the streets of NYC. Oh well, one can dream.

Disappointed that I couldn't get a Man v Wild v Survivorman smackdown going, I started editorial infighting between Ben Steinberg and Maya Ziv from HarperCollins.

Emer Flounders from Houghton with who was to be his cohort Sarah Melnyk from Harcourt.

Nick Snider and Stacy Smith from Wiley showed up and told me that their company planned something like 1600 live events last year for their authors. Whoa.

Former Penguin Peeps Sarah Reidy (Soho), Kristin Dwyer (S&S), Sarah Melnyk (Harcourt)

David Brown AKA Dr. Blogstein was in the house with former Harper colleague Tim Brazier.