Literary agent Irene Skolnick died June 27, 2019 after a long illness. She was 80 years old.
Skolnick began her publishing career at The Hudson Review, where she was managing editor, in addition to assisting in the early years of Parnassus: Poetry in Review. Later she worked as the director of subsidiary rights at Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, and during that time also worked under Frank Conroy at the National Endowment for the Arts and Literature. She \was also a founding member of the Community of Literary Magazines & Presses.
In 1994 Skolnick founded her eponymous literary agency with a focus on representing literary and up-market fiction, history, memoir, biography, YA, and middle grade. She was a member of the Association of Authors Representatives, PEN, and the Women’s Media Group. Among the many authors Skolnick represented were Peter Cameron, Allegra Goodman, Dan Hofstadter, Joyce Johnson, James Lasdun, the late David Rakoff, Vikram Seth, and Edward Sorel.
Plans for a memorial will be announced in the near future.
