Obits

Journalist and author Jesse Kornbluth, 79, died on Thursday of Lewy body dementia. He was a contributing editor for Vanity Fair, New York, and Architectural Digest, and wrote for The New Yorker and The New York Times. He also wrote or co-wrote nine books, including the novels Married Sex and JFK and Mary Meyer: A Love Story. Kornbluth also founded Bookreporter.com with Carol Fitzgerald in 1996, and launched the culture site HeadButler.com. “Jesse was curious, kind, funny and brilliant,” Fitzgerald wrote in the Bookreporter newsletter. “He made my writing better; he liked ‘snappy copy.’ He could shape copy in a […]

Virginia Norey, 68, who worked in publishing for 40 years, most recently as associate director of art/design at Random House, died on March 28 of cancer. Her career began at Penguin Books in 1997, and she eventually moved to Bantam Dell. Elizabeth Rendfleisch, vp & director, RHPG design, writes, “Virginia developed the mass market design standards that grace innumerable titles to this day and created the enduring interior house styles for such luminaries as Danielle Steel, Diana Gabaldon, Lee Child, and George R. R. Martin.” She adds, “Personally, I’ll be forever grateful to Virginia for welcoming me with open arms […]

Author, co-author, and translator Tim Mohr, 55, died on March 31 in New York from pancreatic cancer, Rolling Stone reports. Mohr co-authored Duff McKagan’s It’s So Easy (and other lies), Paul Stanley’s Face the Music: A Life Exposed, and Genesis P-Orridge’s Nonbinary, and completed Gil Scott-Heron’s posthumous memoir The Last Holiday. He published his solo nonfiction book, Burning Down the Haus: Punk Rock, Revolution, and the Fall of the Berlin Wall, in 2018. Executive publisher of Europa Editions Michael Reynolds said, “I loved and admired Tim for his eloquence, his moral compass, his large, rebel heart, his consummate cool. He had […]

Literary agent Roger Freet, 56, died on March 18 from complications from pancreatic cancer. Freet started in publishing as a publicity intern at Princeton University Press in 1997, then worked as associate director of marketing and publicity at HarperOne before moving to editorial. He became an agent at Foundry Literary + Media, then moved to Folio as vice president in 2020. Felice Picano, 81, a novelist, essayist, and poet who chronicled gay male life, died on March 12 in Los Angeles. Picano was the author of 17 novels and eight volumes of memoir, and also founded Sea Horse Press in […]

Agent Jacques de Spoelberch, 88, died on December 26, 2024 in Connecticut. Born in Belgium, de Spoelberch attended Princeton University and worked at Houghton Mifflin as an editor, where he published James Dickey’s Deliverance. He became a literary agent in 1971 and launched his own agency in 1975. According to a tribute from friend and writer Neil Kirk, de Spoelberch was signing new clients as recently as last fall. “He was a kind and gentle soul whose elegance and eloquence was only exceeded by his erudition,” Kirk writes.

Sportswriter John Feinstein, 69, died on March 13, likely of a heart attack, the New York Times reports. Feinstein was the author of more than 40 books about basketball, baseball, tennis, football, golf, and the Olympics, including 1986’s A Season on the Brink. Last year, he published Five Banners: Inside the Duke Dynasty (Duke University Press) and The Ancient Eight: College Football’s Ivy League and the Game They Play Today (Grand Central).