Penguin Press founder Ann Godoff, a powerhouse editor of bestsellers and
prize winners, dies at 76
[February 27, 2026]
By HILLEL ITALIE
NEW YORK (AP) — Ann Godoff, a leading book publisher for more than 30
years with an eye for timely and timeless works from “Alexander
Hamilton” and “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” to current
bestsellers by Gisčle Pelicot and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, has
died. She was 76.
Godoff died of cancer Tuesday in Albany, New York, according to a
statement from Penguin Press, which she had founded in 2003.
“Ann’s impact on American book culture over the past four decades is
incalculable,” Penguin Press publisher Scott Moyers said in a statement.
“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.”
A onetime NYU film student who studied under then-faculty member Martin
Scorsese, sold cars and assisted on Dr. Joyce Brothers' television show,
Godoff was a late bloomer who didn't begin her publishing career until
her early 30s and soon revealed uncommon gifts for spotting and
cultivating talent. As a rising editor at Random House in the 1990s, she
published such debut phenomena as John Berendt's “Midnight in the Garden
of Good and Evil” and Caleb Carr's “The Alienist.”
She also worked with Salman Rushdie, E.L. Doctorow and Arundhati Roy and
had lasting relationships with Michael Pollan and Ron Chernow, whose
books with Godoff have included a Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of
George Washington and the Hamilton biography that was the basis for the
prize-winning stage musical.
“Ann supervised me with a rather light touch and never got lost in the
details," Chernow wrote in an email to The Associated Press.
“She was no less gifted in fashioning a design for the book — everything
from the cover art to the paper stock — with a look fully consistent
with my portrait of the character,” he added. “Everything was of a piece
and that was carried straight through to the marketing and publicity. I
always felt myself in the most capable hands.”
Godoff was eventually promoted to president and editor in chief of
Random House, and her stature was so high that when she was forced out
in 2003 amid corporate restructuring, her departure set off debates —
evergreen in the industry — over the feared decline of literary
publishing.
But Penguin soon signed her up to lead the new Penguin Press imprint.
Chernow, Pollan and other authors moved there with her, and she
continued to publish bestsellers and critical favorites, including such
Pulitzer Prize winners as Steve Coll's “Ghost Wars” and John Lewis
Gaddis' “George F. Kennan.”
[to top of second column]
|
This combination of images show Penguin Press books published by Ann
Godoff, from left, "A Hymn to Life: Shame Has to Change Sides" by
Gisčle Pelicot, "Alexander Hamilton" by Ron Chernow, "A World
Appears: A Journey into Consciousness" by Michael Pollan, and "Young
Man in a Hurry: A Memoir of Discovery" by Gavin Newsom. (Penguin
Press via AP)
 When Random House and Penguin merged
into Penguin Random House in 2013, Godoff was under the same roof as
her old company. Right up to the time of her death, she was shaping
the public conversation. Pelicot's “A Hymn to Life” recounts her
horrifying marriage and how she came to be a leading voice against
sexual violence, while Newsom's “Young Man in a Hurry” is widely
seen as a building block for a 2028 presidential run.
Godoff was born in 1949 in New York City, grew up
in New York and California, and graduated from Bennington College.
She started out at Simon & Schuster in the early 1980s as an
assistant to Alice Mayhew, the renowned editor of Bob Woodward and
Doris Kearns Goodwin among others. After serving as editor in chief
at Atlantic Monthly Press, Godoff joined Random House in 1991.
Her marriage to Malcolm Drummond ended in divorce in 2012 after a
long separation. The same year, Godoff married her partner, the
writer-photographer Annik LaFarge. Besides LaFarge, her survivors
include her brother, Peter Godoff.
Ann Godoff never had the outsized personality of such Random House
predecessors as Bennett Cerf and Harold Evans. She was regarded by
many as serious, hard-working and committed, known for saying “The
book will abide.” But she was competitive, and she didn’t mind
making news. She paid a reported $8 million for “Cold Mountain”
author Charles Frazier’s next novel, a sum many found excessive at
the time, and a comparable amount for a memoir by former Federal
Reverse Chairman Alan Greenspan.
Bestselling author Roger Lowenstein, whose seven books have all been
published by Godoff, wrote in an email to the AP that she was an
exacting but precise editor. He remembered a “blistering memo” from
her while shaping the manuscript for “Ways and Means: Lincoln and
His Cabinet and the Financing of the Civil War,” a prize-winning
history published in 2022. His final draft was 90 pages shorter and
he couldn't think of a “single word” that he regretted being cut.
“She generally reserved her praise, at least in my case, until the
end of the process, often in letters that arrived unexpected in the
mail,” he wrote. “Nothing was ever sweeter, because one worked so
hard to get there, and because you knew that she meant it.”
All contents © copyright 2026 Associated Press. All rights reserved |
