Obits

Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, 89, who won the 2010 Nobel Prize for Literature, died on Sunday in Lima. His first novel, The Time of the Hero, was published in 1963. Other works include Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, The War of the End of the World, and more. He ran for president of Peru in 1990.

Lerner Publishing Group founder and chair Harry Lerner, 93, died on April 8. Lerner began his publishing career as a GI in Germany when when he published a guidebook for fellow servicemen. In 1959 he began publishing children’s books and launched the company’s first imprint, Carolrhoda Books, with his first wife, Sharon Lerner, in 1969. He ran the company until 1998, when his son Adam Lerner took over.

Journalist and author Jesse Kornbluth, 79, died on Thursday of Lewy body dementia. He was a contributing editor for Vanity Fair, New York, and Architectural Digest, and wrote for The New Yorker and The New York Times. He also wrote or co-wrote nine books, including the novels Married Sex and JFK and Mary Meyer: A Love Story. Kornbluth also founded Bookreporter.com with Carol Fitzgerald in 1996, and launched the culture site HeadButler.com. “Jesse was curious, kind, funny and brilliant,” Fitzgerald wrote in the Bookreporter newsletter. “He made my writing better; he liked ‘snappy copy.’ He could shape copy in a […]

Virginia Norey, 68, who worked in publishing for 40 years, most recently as associate director of art/design at Random House, died on March 28 of cancer. Her career began at Penguin Books in 1997, and she eventually moved to Bantam Dell. Elizabeth Rendfleisch, vp & director, RHPG design, writes, “Virginia developed the mass market design standards that grace innumerable titles to this day and created the enduring interior house styles for such luminaries as Danielle Steel, Diana Gabaldon, Lee Child, and George R. R. Martin.” She adds, “Personally, I’ll be forever grateful to Virginia for welcoming me with open arms […]

Author, co-author, and translator Tim Mohr, 55, died on March 31 in New York from pancreatic cancer, Rolling Stone reports. Mohr co-authored Duff McKagan’s It’s So Easy (and other lies), Paul Stanley’s Face the Music: A Life Exposed, and Genesis P-Orridge’s Nonbinary, and completed Gil Scott-Heron’s posthumous memoir The Last Holiday. He published his solo nonfiction book, Burning Down the Haus: Punk Rock, Revolution, and the Fall of the Berlin Wall, in 2018. Executive publisher of Europa Editions Michael Reynolds said, “I loved and admired Tim for his eloquence, his moral compass, his large, rebel heart, his consummate cool. He had […]

Literary agent Roger Freet, 56, died on March 18 from complications from pancreatic cancer. Freet started in publishing as a publicity intern at Princeton University Press in 1997, then worked as associate director of marketing and publicity at HarperOne before moving to editorial. He became an agent at Foundry Literary + Media, then moved to Folio as vice president in 2020. Felice Picano, 81, a novelist, essayist, and poet who chronicled gay male life, died on March 12 in Los Angeles. Picano was the author of 17 novels and eight volumes of memoir, and also founded Sea Horse Press in […]