James Beard–award winning author and notable editor of cookbooks and lifestyle books Roy Finamore, 70, died on May 6 after a brief illness. He was at an editor at Stewart, Tabori & Chang and then Clarkson Potter, where he published cookbooks by authors including Martha Stewart, Ina Garten, Diana Kennedy, Jean Anderson, Anne Willan, Lee Bailey, Carole Walter, Tom Colicchio, Bobby Flay, and Gale Gand. He won the James Beard Foundation Award for Best General Cookbook in 2007 for his second book as an author, TASTY: Get Great Food on the Table Every Day.
Obits
Obituary: Clayton Carlson
Founder and publisher/editor-in-chief of Harper San Francisco (now Harper One), Clayton Carlson, 83, died at home on April 20. Carlson led the relocation of the Harper & Row religion, philosophy and psychology departments from New York to San Francisco in 1976. Titles he published included talks by the Dalai Lama, Paulo Coelho’s ALCHEMIST, Melody Beattie’s CODEPENDENT, and Billy Graham’s memoir JUST AS I AM.
Obituary: Michael Denneny
Michael Denneny, 80, died on April 12. He worked as an editor at the University of Chicago Press, Macmillan, St. Martin’s Press, and Crown, and published books including Randy Shilts’s And the Band Played On, Buckminster Fuller’s Critical Path, Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls, and Judith Thurman’s Isak Dinesen. The first openly gay editor at a major publishing house, Denneny was instrumental in publishing gay literature and founded Stonewall Inn Editions at St. Martin’s in 1987. He also founded Christopher Street magazine and wrote three books, including On Christopher Street: Life, Sex, and Death After Stonewall, which published in March.
Obituaries: Anne Perry, Bill Ott
Anne Perry, 84, died on April 10 in Los Angeles. Perry was the author of more than 100 novels, including the bestselling William Monk series and the Charlotte and Thomas Pitt series, and won the Edgar Award in 2000 for her story “Heroes.” Perry’s editor, Ballantine executive editor Susanna Porter, said, “Ballantine Books has had the honor of being Anne Perry’s US publisher for over twenty years. Her novels have collectively spent many months on the New York Times and other national bestseller lists, American readers having embraced her clever and thought-provoking crime writing by the thousands. Anne in turn […]
Obituary: Rick Wolff
Rick Wolff, who edited bestselling books including Rich Dad Poor Dad and co-authored 18 books of his own, died on April 10 of brain cancer. Wolff was also the host of weekly radio show The Sports Edge, on WFAN in New York City. His family writes in a remembrance, “To know Rick or Dad or Pops was to love him. He was wise, thoughtful, sharp, funny, incredibly smart, and truly just a wonderful person. In his honor, please remember to never give up on your dreams. He never did, even after so many of them had come true.”
Obituary: DM Thomas
DM Thomas, author of The White Hotel, has died at 88. Thomas was a scholar of Russian literature and a poet, and also wrote Ararat and Eating Pavlova.