Susan Kamil, longtime publisher and editor, dead at 69

Susan Kamil, a revered editor and publisher who found critical and commercial success with authors ranging from Salman Rushdie and Ta-Nehisi Coates to Elizabeth Strout and Sophie Kinsella, has died at age 69.

Random House Publishing Group President Gina Centrello announced that Kamil died Sunday, eight days before her 70th birthday, from complications relating to lung cancer. Kamil, who joined the industry more than 40 years ago, was most recently executive vice president and publisher of Random House and imprints such as Dial Press and One World.

"Susan was one of the great editors, and working with her has been the best experience of my writing life," Rushdie said in a statement.

"Her clarity and sharpness were invaluable to me and I trusted her instincts always. She was also one of the loveliest human beings I have known, and I grew to love her very much.

It's a devastating loss for so many of us." Her death was widely mourned on social media, with Laura Zigman, Elizabeth McCracken and other authors tweeting tributes.

Some of the fall's most prominent books were completed under Kamil's leadership, among them Rushdie's Booker Prize-nominated novel "Quichotte"; Coates' debut novel, "The Water Dancer"; Prince's posthumous memoir, "The Beautiful Ones"; and Strout's "Olive, Again."
Kamil "must have read this manuscript five, six, maybe seven times," Goodman told Publishers Weekly at the time the novel came out. "She wrote on every single page all over in pencil and she did that twice. She cared so deeply for this book and the characters in it. She would talk about them as if they were real people, which is how I feel about it but you don't expect other people to feel the same way."