Obits

Marvin S. Brown, 87, a publishing executive who served as president at Atheneum, New American Library, Viking Penguin, and Penguin USA, died in his home in Boca Raton, Florida on July 15. Science fiction writer Eric Flint, 75, New York Times bestselling author of Alternate History, died on July 17.

Cook book author Dianna Kennedy, 99, author of 1972 cookbook The Cuisines of Mexico, as well as The Tortilla Book and My Mexico, died on Sunday. Book publisher Merloyd Lawrence, 89, died in Cambridge, MA on June 27 of congestive heart disease. She was the co-founder of Seymour Lawrence and over the course of her career worked at Addison-Wesley, Perseus Publishing, Da Capo Press, Basic Books and Hachette. A memorial will be held at King’s Chapel in Boston, with a date in October to be decided.

Sophie Castille, 51, director of Mediatoon Foreign Rights as well as co-founder and managing director of Europe Comics, died on July 11. A tribute page has been set up for friends and colleagues to contribute memories.

Co-founder of Cinco Punto Press Bobby Byrd, 80, died on July 11 in El Paso, TX. Byrd was a poet and started Cinco Puntos with his wife, Lee Merrill Byrd, in 1985, and sold the independent publisher to Lee & Low last year.

Chairman and co-founder of Janklow & Nesbit Associates, Morton L. Janklow died Wednesday morning at home in Water Mill, NY from heart failure. An attorney, he launched his career as a literary agent in 1972 when his friend and client, William Safire, asked him to handle a book he was writing about Richard Nixon. As the agency adds in a release, “When the Watergate scandal broke and the book’s publisher, William Morrow, tried to back out of the contract, Janklow sued, ushering in a new era of authors’ rights; he later sold the book to Doubleday. ‘We took the publisher […]

Roger Angell, 101, baseball writer, former editor at The New Yorker, and author of Late Innings and Once More Around the Park, died on Friday in Manhattan of congestive heart failure.