Obits

Carin Goldberg, 69, a graphic designer who designed many famous book covers, died on January 19 of a brain tumor. One of her best-known designs was the cover of a 1986 reissue of Ulysses. The NYT writes that she was “a scholar of designs and typefaces, particularly those of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which she reimagined in elegant and witty combinations on the covers of hundreds of albums and thousands of books.”

Eileen Ahearn, 75, best-known as a former administrator of the James Baldwin Estate, passed away after a short illness on January 6. Ahearn began her career in publishing as a typist at Random House in the early 1970s, alongside the late Carolyn Reidy, with whom she would work and consult over five decades. She served as secretary to Toni Morrison when she was an editor, which turned into a lifelong bond. For the last nearly 30 years of her career, she worked as a consultant with Reidy at Simon & Schuster, retiring in 2020.

Author Jonathan Raban, 80, who wrote “wrote literary narratives of his travel,” died Tuesday in Seattle, of complications from a stroke he had in 2011. His memoir Father and Son will be published in September 2023. Marion Meade, 88, best known for her biography of Dorothy Parker What Fresh Hell Is This?, died on December 29, of complications of COVID. She was also the author of acclaimed biographies on Eleanor of Aquitaine, Buster Keaton, and others.

Prolific Serbian-American poet Charles Simic, 84, died on Monday at an assisted living facility in Dover, NH from complications with dementia. Simic was the US Poet Laureate in 2007 and his 1990 poetry collection The World Doesn’t End won the 1990 Pulitzer Prize.

Russell Banks, 82, died of cancer on January 8 at his home in Saratoga Springs, NY. Banks was the author of 21 books, including Continental Drift (1985) and Cloudsplitter (1998), which were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize.

British novelist Fay Weldon died on January 4 at age 91. Weldon was the author of the memoir Auto Da Fay and 30 novels, including The Life and Loves Of a She-Devil and Praxis, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. She was also a playwright and screenwriter.