Gary Fisketjon 1954 – 2026

Biography

Gary Lynn Fisketjon was an American book editor regarded as one of the finest literary editors of his generation. Born September 3, 1954, in Salem, Oregon, he created Random House’s Vintage Contemporaries paperback line and was editorial director of the Atlantic Monthly Press from 1986 to 1990 before joining Alfred A. Knopf in 1990, where he spent nearly three decades as an editor and vice-president. The authors he edited included Cormac McCarthy, Donna Tartt, Bret Easton Ellis, Jay McInerney, Don DeLillo, Tobias Wolff and Haruki Murakami. Knopf dismissed him in 2019, and in July 2025 he became head of Panamerica, the fiction imprint of the magazine County Highway. He died of a stroke at his home in Salem on November 7, 2026. He was 72, survived by his wife Diana.