Obits

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.

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 […]

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.”

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.

John Jakes, 90, bestselling author of The Kent Family Chronicles and the North and South trilogy, died on Saturday at a hospice facility in Sarasota, FL. Jakes wrote around 60 novels across many genres, but saw the biggest sales for his historical fictions, some of which sold in the millions.

Former Congresswoman and longtime president and CEO of the AAP Patricia Schroeder, 82, died in Florida of complications from a stroke. The NYT calls her “a trailblazing feminist legislator who helped redefine the role of women in American politics and used her wit to combat egregious sexism in Congress.” Current AAP ceo Maria Pallante comments: “As many will write, Pat Schroeder was a principled and pioneering Member of Congress, where she used her ferocious legal chops, wit, and skill to advance issues that were often called women’s issues but were really about families or fighter pilots.  The American publishing community […]