Notable Literary Deaths in 2025

To the members of the literary community we lost this year, we say a last thank you, and goodbye. You will be missed.

*

Celebrated English novelist and literature professor David Lodge, whose campus novels rank among the best of the genre, died on January 1 at the age of 89.

Novelist James Carlos Blake died on January 11 at the age of 81.

Southern cookbook author Nathalie Dupree died on January 13 at the age of 85.

Jules Feiffer, the Pulitzer prize-winning writer and political cartoonist, died on January 17 at the age of 95.

Novelist Geoff Nicholson died on January 18 at the age of 71.

Millicent Dillon, novelist, short story writer, and Jane and Paul Bowles scholar, died on January 27 at the age of 99.

Portuguese feminist writer Maria Teresa Horta died on February 4 at the age of 87.

Beloved comic novelist Tom Robbins—arguably most famous for his 1976 novel Even Cowgirls Get the Blues—died on February 9 at the age of 92.

Caldecott Medal-winning author and illustrator Uri Shulevitz died on February 15 at the age of 89.

Canadian writer Antonine Maillet died on February 17 at the age of 95.

Beat Generation poet Gerd Stern died on February 17. He was 96.

Frankétienne, the “father of Haitian letters,” died on February 20 at the age of 88.

National Book Award-winning novelist John Casey died on February 22 at the age of 86.

Irish novelist Jennifer Johnston died on February 25 at the age of 95.

Independent publisher Herman Graf, veteran of Grove Press and co-founder of Carroll & Graf, died on February 27 at the age of 91.

Crime writer Joseph Wambaugh died on February 28 at the age of 88.

Children’s book author Jean Van Leeuwen died on March 3 at the age of 87.

L.J. Smith, author of The Vampire Diaries series, died on March 8 at the age of 66.

Author and publisher Felice Picano, who “helped usher in a golden age of gay literature,” died on March 12 at the age of 81.

Sportswriter John Feinstein died on March 14 at the age of 69.

Celebrated Norwegian writer Dag Solstad died on March 14 at the age of 83.

Bob Dylan biographer, true crime writer, and novelist Dennis McDougal died on March 22 at the age of 77.

Book critic, writer, and frequent Lit Hub contributor John Domini died on March 27. He was 74.

Translator Tim Mohr died on March 31 at the age of 55.

Magazine writer Jesse Kornbluth died on April 3 at the age of 79.

Elsa Honig Fine, the founder of Women’s Art Journal, died on April 7 at the age of 94.

Nobel Prize-winning Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa died on April 13 at the age of 89.

Valentin-Yves Mudimbe, Congolese-American novelist, philosopher, and cultural historian who critiqued “the colonial library,” died on April 22 at the age of 83.

The uncategorizable British novelist Jane Gardam died on April 28 at the age of 96.

Nahid Rachlin, whose debut novel Foreigner was one of the first books written in English by an Iranian author, died on April 30 at the age of 85.

Journalist Elizabeth Pochoda died on May 8 at the age of 83.

South African writer Lynn Freed died on May 9 at the age of 79.

Norma Swenson, author of Our Bodies, Ourselves, died on May 11 at the age of 93.

Literary novelist, critic, poet, and translator David Slavitt, who also wrote pulp fiction bestsellers under the pen name Henry Sutton, died on May 17 at the age of 90.

Irish poet Paul Durcan died on May 17 at the age of 80.

Novelist and writing teacher Leslie Epstein died on May 18 at the age of 87.

Celebrated poet Alice Notley died on May 19 at the age of 79.

Soviet poet James Lloydovich Patterson died on May 22 at the age of 91.

Comic book writer Peter David died on May 24 at the age of 68.

Susan Brownmiller, author of the influential Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape, died on May 24 at the age of 90.

Kenyan novelist, playwright, poet, and critic Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o died on May 28 at the age of 87.

Anne Harris, editor of bestsellers including The Exorcist and The Thorn Birds, died on June 1. She was 99.

French scholar and historian Pierre Nora died on June 2 at the age of 93.

Prolific novelist, essayist, memoirist, and biographer (not to mention gay literary icon) Edmund White died on June 3 at the age of 85.

French author and journalist Philippe Labro died on June 4 at the age of 88.

Barbara Holdridge, who pioneered audiobooks as we know them by co-founding “the first commercially successful spoken-word record label,” died on June 9 at the age of 95.

Bestselling thriller writer Frederick Forsyth, author of The Day of the Jackal, died on June 9 at the age of 86.

Magazine writer and author William Langewiesche died on June 15 at the age of 70.

Memoirist Jane Lazarre, who tackled “the intersections of race, class and gender in late 20th-century America,” died on June 19 at the age of 81.

Bestselling YA novelist Susan Beth Pfeffer died on June 23 at the age of 77.

Independent publisher John Martin, who founded Black Sparrow Press and championed Charles Bukowski, died on June 23 at the age of 94.

Crime novelist Jane Stanton Hitchcock died on June 23 at the age of 78.

Novelist and poet Paulette Jiles, arguably best known for News of the World, died on July 8 at the age of 82.

Celebrated poet Fanny Howe died on July 8 at the age of 84.

Martin Cruz Smith, bestselling author of Gorky Park, died on July 11 at the age of 82.

Poet and activist Andrea Gibson died on July 14 at the age of 49.

Poet Thomas Sayers Ellis, a founder of the Dark Room Collective, died on July 17 at the age of 61.

Acclaimed British children’s book author Allan Ahlberg died on July 29 at the age of 87.

Michael Lydon, a founding editor of Rolling Stone, died on July 30 at the age of 82.

Sue Bender, author of the bestselling Plain and Simple, died on August 3 at the age of 91.

Linguist Robin Lakoff died on August 5 at the age of 82.

Novelist, activist, philanthropist, and onetime newspaper scion Sallie Bingham died on August 6 at the age of 88.

Egyptian novelist Sonallah Ibrahim died on August 13 at the age of 88.

Novelist Greg Iles died on August 15 at the age of 65.

Cultural critic and Alfred Hitchcock biographer John Russell Taylor died on August 18 at the age of 90.

Gérard Chaliand, expert on geopolitics, died on August 20 at the age of 91.

Longtime W.W. Norton editor Starling Lawrence died on August 21 at the age of 82.

Zdena Salivarova, who published banned Czech literature from exile in Canada, died on August 25 at the age of 91.

Patrick Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway’s second son and last surviving offspring, died on September 2 at the age of 97.

Rosalyn Drexler, novelist, screenwriter, Pop Art icon, and professional wrestler, died on September 3 at the age of 98.

South African journalist and chronicler of persecution Ruth Weiss died on September 5 at the age of 101.

Poet and novelist Maxine Clair died on September 5 at the age of 86.

Charley Rosen, former basketball player and bestselling author of many books about the sport, died on September 13 at the age of 84.

Bestselling thriller writer Thomas Perry died on September 15 at the age of 78.

Dan Wickett, cofounder of Dzanc Books, died on September 15 at the age of 59.

Food writer Marian Burros died on September 20 at the age of 92.

Philosopher Jonathan Lear died on September 22 at the age of 76.

Tony Harrison, “Britain’s reigning poet of the working class,” died on September 26 at the age of 88.

Robert B. Barnett, a lawyer who specialized in negotiating huge book deals for politicians and other celebrities, died on September 26 at the age of 79.

Writer Alison Rose died in late September at the age of 81.

Susan Griffin, poet and influential ecofeminist, died on September 30 at the age of 82.

British author Gillian Tindall died on October 1 at the age of 87.

One of the great Czech writers of the 20th century, Ivan Klima, died on October 4 at the age of 94.

Beloved English romance novelist Jilly Cooper died on October 5 at the age of 88.

Editor Chuck Adams died on October 6 at the age of 82.

Linguist Stephen R. Anderson died on October 13 at the age of 82.

Award-winning South African author Zoë Wicomb died on October 13. She was 76.

Hal Sirowitz, a poet laureate of Queens, died on October 17 at the age of 76.

Ed Moloney, chronicler of the Troubles, died on October 17 at the age of 77.

Feminist Bible scholar Phyllis Trible died on October 17 at the age of 92.

Popular memoirist Terry Martin Hekker died on October 20 at the age of 92.

Ellen Bryant Voigt, a poet laureate of Vermont, died on October 23 at the age of 82.

David Bellos, renowned translator of Georges Perec, died on October 26 at the age of 80.

Maria Riva, daughter and biographer of Marlene Dietrich, died on October 29 at the age of 100.

Jeanette Winter, who pioneered picture book biographies for children, died on November 7 at the age of 86.

Prolific romance novelist Fern Michaels died on November 12 at the age of 92.

Writer and disability rights advocate Alice Wong died on November 14 at the age of 51.

Conservative British political writer David Pryce-Jones died on November 17 at the age of 89.

Novelist of the Ozarks Daniel Woodrell, best known for Winter’s Bone, died on November 28 at the age of 72.

Tom Stoppard, “the thinker’s playwright,” died on November 29 at the age of 88.

Poet, novelist, and competitive horsewoman DéLana R.A. Dameron died on November 29 at the age of 40.

Mark Jay Mirsky, novelist, professor, and founder of Fiction magazine, died on December 5 at the age of 86.

Madeleine Wickham, the author of the Shopaholic novels who wrote under the pseudonym Sophie Kinsella, died on December 10. She was 55.

Bestselling British novelist Joanna Trollope died on December 11 at the age of 82.

John Carey, literary critic and longtime Oxford professor, died on December 11 at the age of 91

Norman Podhoretz, longtime editor of conservative magazine Commentary, died on December 16 at the age of 95.

Australian poet Chris Wallace-Crabbe died on December 16 at the age of 91.

Pulitzer Prize-winning war journalist Peter Arnett died on December 17 at the age of 91.

Playwright Robert Heide died on December 17 at the age of 91.

Ronald Reagan biographer Lou Cannon died on December 19 at the age of 92.

Ronald Reagan ghostwriter and author of The Falcon and the Snowman Robert Lindsay died on December 19 at the age of 90.