Gary Fisketjon has died at age 72,American editor

Gary Fisketjon, an American editor, died November 9, 2026, aged 72.

Born in 1954, he worked in editorial roles at Random House, the Atlantic Monthly Press and Alfred A. Knopf.

At Random House, he created Vintage Contemporaries, a line of paperbacks. He was editorial director of the Atlantic Monthly Press from 1986 to 1990, a period that preceded his move to Knopf. In 1990, he joined Alfred A. Knopf as editor-at-large, and later became an editor and vice-president of Knopf Publishing. He remained in those Knopf roles until his dismissal in May 2019. The authors Fisketjon edited included Jay McInerney, Cormac McCarthy, Donna Tartt, Bret Easton Ellis, Tobias Wolff, Julian Barnes, Patricia Highsmith, Haruki Murakami and Richard Ford. His work thus included creating a paperback line at Random House, leading the Atlantic Monthly Press editorial department and editing authors at Knopf. Across those posts, his career was rooted in editorial work at three prominent publishing houses, with responsibilities that included both developing a series and working with individual writers. Fisketjon’s publishing career extended from his appointment at the Atlantic Monthly Press in the 1980s through his departure from Knopf in 2019.