Philip Roth, one of the most renowned writers of our time, passed away last week at the age of 85 in Manhattan. We are extremely honored to have published some of his work. The following is an excerpt from Roth Unbound, Claudia Roth...

Tom Wolfe, a pioneering voice of his generation, passed away this week at the age of 88 in New York City. We are extremely honored to have published fourteen of his books. The following is an excerpt from The Right Stuff, his nonfiction...

Rather than reflect on his poems or essays, which are still here for anyone to read or reread, I want to say a few words about our friendship, one whose nature, though central, is hard to capture, apparently uneventful as it was. Everything that...

Shirley Hazzard, who died on December 12 at the age of 85, wrote two collections of short stories, four novels, and three works of nonfiction. FSG published her last two works: in 2000, a memoir about Graham Greene, Greene on Capri, and, in...

It is with great sadness that we say goodbye to poet C. K. Williams who died at his home last Sunday. In twenty-two books of poetry, Williams graced us with his revelatory honesty, his passionate inquiries, and his unflinching morality. His body of work...

Seamus Heaney’s death last week left a rift in our lives, and in poetry, that won’t easily be mended. A Nobel Laureate, a devoted husband, a sharp translator, a beloved friend, and the big-hearted leader of the “Government of the Tongue,” Seamus was a poet of conscience; his close-friend and fellow poet Paul Muldoon said, “He was the only poet I can think of who was recognized worldwide as having moral as well as literary authority.” Poetry was a vocation that he dedicated his life to, something he believed had “the power to persuade that vulnerable part of our consciousness of its rightness in spite of the evidence of wrongness all around it, the power to remind us that we are hunters and gatherers of values, that our very solitudes and distresses are creditable, in so far as they too are an earnest of our veritable human being.” Uncannily attuned to the voices of the world around him, his poems made both the personal and collective subconscious realms concrete in language.

By Yael Kohen Before I was led into the receiving room of Phyllis Diller’s 10,000-square-foot, gated Brentwood home, I was told the legendary comedy queen, who died Monday at the age of 95, preferred to be called Madame Diller. There would be no hugging or kissing—just a shaking of the hands. I would have 30 minutes and then I would sit on a velvety green settee that was positioned on Madame Diller’s right. The formality threw me. I didn’t expect Madame Diller, the mad-cap comedian with the tacky frocks and fright wig—famous for the kind of self-deprecating barbs that make you cringe—to take herself so seriously. We’ve all heard about comedy’s boys clubs and the only explanation that popped into my head was that maybe after a half-century of working on a male-dominated comedy circuit, Diller had a chip on her shoulder and wanted to make sure she was getting some respect. But Diller, who was 92 at the time of the interview, was not at all like that. And she didn’t talk about boys clubs. That wasn’t a barrier she seemed to relate to even though when she launched her career back in the late-1950s, she was one of the few women who dared to perform standup. “Whether you’re man, woman, or mouse,” she said in an interview for my book We Killed: The Rise of Women in American Comedy. “It’s either you are funny or you aren’t. Either you connect or you don’t.” How about hecklers? “I never had hecklers. Here’s my rhythm: Either I am talking or they are laughing. You would’ve had to make an appointment to heckle me. Silence attracts hecklers. They have to have silence. They never had a chance.” Did she get paid as much as her male peers? “Probably more.” At the height of her career, Diller said she was pulling in a million a year.