Obits

Ron Pitkin, 79, founder of independent publisher Cumberland House, died on April 6. Todd Stocke, senior vice president and editorial director at Sourcebooks (which acquired Cumberland House in 2008) said, “Ron was sort of a quiet legend with a very big heart in the publishing business. Simultaneously creative and deeply soulful, Ron could position books like few others. He truly had the every-person’s touch. We are proud to carry on his legacy, and we share our best wishes with his family and all those who loved him.” On literary agent Jill Kneerim, who died last week, writer and former Boston […]

Lou Satz, 94, who worked for many years in sales at Bantam Books, died on April 9. The Penguin Random House in-house newsletter notes that his “driving sales leadership for such reprint titles as THE EXORCIST, ALL CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL, and JAWS helped position Bantam Books as a twentieth century mass-market paperback publishing powerhouse.”

Louisa Solano, 80, owner of Grolier Poetry Book Shop in Cambridge, MA died of Parkinson’s Disease on April 20.

Partner and co-founder of Boston-based agency Kneerim & Williams Jill Kneerim died on April 22 at age 83. She was an editor at Simon & Schuster and co-founder of Grossman Publishers, then in 1990 founded the agency with Ike Williams. Her authors included Pulitzer Prize winners Matthew Desmond, Caroline Elkins, and Stephen Greenblatt among others, including Brad Meltzer, who paid tribute to her online: “For 28 years now, she taught me to have faith in growth — and to have faith in myself. Especially these last five years as I pushed to be a better writer.” Her colleagues at Kneerim […]

Christopher Finch, 82, author of thirty nonfiction and fiction books, art critic and painter, died on April 1 in Los Angeles. Finch’s books include The Art of Walt Disney, Rainbow: The Stormy Life of Judy Garland, Norman Rockwell’s America, two volumes on the artist Chuck Close, and more.

Roy Tedoff, former director of college manufacturing at Norton for many years, died on April 1. Tedoff joined Norton in 1969.