Obituaries

Publishers Lunch

Novelist Kent Haruf, 71, has died, his editor Gary Fisketjon confirmed to the Washington Post on Sunday. The new issue of Granta has an autobiographical essay by Haruf, and his novel OUR SOULS AT NIGHT is due to be published next year. Fisketjon said, "Kent had finished all his revisions and even gone through the copy editing. We had it scheduled for May, though I haven't yet processed how this tragic news might alter those plans."

PD James, 94, the British crime writer and member of the House of Lords, died Thursday morning at her home in Oxford. She was the author of 19 novels, most notably the Inspector Dalgliesh series, which began with COVER HER FACE (1962) and closed with THE PRIVATE PATIENT (2008), as well as two novels featuring private detective Cordelia Gray, the standalone THE CHILDREN OF MEN (1992) and, most recently, DEATH COMES TO PEMBERLEY (2011), a sequel to Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice. James' longtime editor at Knopf Charles Elliott said in a statement: "Phyllis broke the bounds of the mystery genre. Her books were in a class of their own, consistently entertaining yet as well-written and serious as any fiction of our time. She was, moreover, a delight to be around and work with, beloved by readers and her publishers around the world. We will all miss her." Many tributes have poured in since James' publishers announced her passing, most notably from Ruth Rendell, Louise Penny, and Val McDermid.

Poet and winner of the Pulitzer Prize Mark Strand, 80, died November 29 at his daughter's home in Brooklyn. Strand was awarded the MacArthur grant in 1987, named poet laureate of the US in 1990, and won the Pulitzer in 1999 for his collection BLIZZARD OF ONE.