In Memoriam: Ann Godoff, Founder, President, and Editor-in-Chief, Penguin Press
From Scott Moyers, President & Publisher, Penguin Press: It is with great sadness that I write with the news of the passing of our beloved colleague Ann Godoff, Penguin Press’s founder, President, and Editor-in-Chief.
Ann’s impact on American book culture over the past four decades is incalculable. An editor of immense range in fiction, nonfiction and poetry, Ann shepherded into print innumerable New York Times bestsellers, multiple winners of every major award, and works that have appeared on all manner of best books lists – of the year, the decade, and the century. Beyond the industry accolades, her legacy should be measured in her success in helping authors create indelible new spaces in the minds of readers.
Ann was born in New York City in 1949 and moved to Los Angeles in 1957. The family returned to New York in the mid-1960s after her father’s death, and Ann graduated from Calhoun. She had a short stint in Bennington before a bohemian year in London, then NYU Film School studying under, among others, Martin Scorsese, then a pitstop in architecture school, and a stint selling used cars, which she loved to say prepared her for her career in publishing better than any formal education. She worked as a line producer on Dr Joyce Brothers’ television show, after which she decompressed in the Caribbean, and then returned to New York to take a temp job in the Simon & Schuster editorial department working for the great Alice Mayhew. She was home.
From there her ascent was meteoric, first at Atlantic Monthly Press with Morgan Entrekin and Gary Fisketjon, and then, in the early 90s, Random House, where she truly broke out as an editor and publisher of works of quality with astonishing commercial reach, such as John Berendt’s multi-million-copy bestseller Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, Caleb Carr’s The Alienist, Michael Pollan’s first books, Ron Chernow’s Titan, and Zadie Smith’s White Teeth. At the same time, she reoriented the Random House list to focus on growing the backlist, launching both Modern Library paperback classics, and Random House’s flagship paperback line.
All of this would be school for her next act, moving to Penguin in 2003 at the invitation of Susan Petersen Kennedy and John Makinson to launch Penguin Press. Thanks to the precious faith of a core group of cherished writers and literary agents, Penguin Press was able to launch with over forty remarkable authors, an astonishing foundation for a new imprint. Of the 12 books on our inaugural spring 2004 list, one, Steve Coll’s Ghost Wars, won the Pulitzer Prize, and two, Ron Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton, and Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s The Shadow of the Wind, have sold well over a million copies, and counting.
Ann built Penguin Press on the foundation of her core beliefs as a publisher. She leaned against the constraints of trends, and chose authors and books with an eye toward building careers. She was confident in her taste, but eager to learn from her colleagues. The long game was always clear: to shepherd into the world the next generation of classics. In Penguin Press Ann created her dream of a field of possibility for authors to feel free to do their best work, for her team to feel free to do their best in its support, and ultimately readers to come to trust in the imprint’s imprimatur to deliver reading experiences that feel necessary. Three books she edited have been published in the past two weeks: Gisèle Pelicot’s A Hymn to Life on February 17th and Gavin Newsom’s Young Man in a Hurry and Michael Pollan’s A World Appears on February 24th. Ann edited all ten of Michael Pollan’s books.
Ann also nourished the early careers of many publishing leaders; the number of her mentees in key roles in our industry is another tribute to her acumen and to her belief in the work we do.
She is survived by her loving partner, Annik LaFarge, her brother Peter, his wife Heidi, and their children Lara and Nicky.
Ann lived the credo of her beloved author Mary Oliver: “to pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.” She made us all braver and better, and everything we do is on the foundation she built.