Les Phillabaum, longtime director of Louisiana State University Press and a leading publisher of Southern literature, died on January 14, the Baton Rouge Advocate reported. He was 73 and had retired from the press in 2003.
Phillabaum began his publishing career as a manuscript editor at Penn State Press, became editor-in-chief of the University of North Carolina Press in 1963 and in 1970 joined LSU Press as executive editor and associate director. He became director in 1975.
During his time at LSU Press, he published A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole, which was the first university press book to win a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. He also published more than 200 poetry books, two of which won Pulitzers.
Current press director MaryKatherine Callaway wrote in a note to AAUP directors: "Les was an early champion of many distinguished writers, publishing work by Joyce Carol Oates, James Lee Burke, Miller Williams, C. Vann Woodward, Lisel Mueller, Henry Taylor, Drew Gilpin Faust, Fred Chappell, Louis Rubin, David Slavitt and Fred Hobson. He worked with Mobil to develop the Pegasus Prize for Literature, designed to promote translations of award-winning fiction from other countries, and that series included several outstanding books, such as Keri Hulme's The Bone People, The Year of the Frog by Martin Simecka and Turbulence by Jia Pingwa. He helped revive interest in Robert Penn Warren by publishing John Burt's monumental edition of Warren's collected poems and reprinting several of the novels."
---
Malcolm MacPherson, a journalist who wrote 15 books, died on January 17 at the age of 65, Melville House, one of his publishers, said. MacPherson had a heart attack while at home with a gathering of friends and family celebrating the inauguration of Barack Obama as President.
One of his more recent books, Hocus POTUS, published in 2007 by Melville House, was a satire set in Iraq after the invasion and was based on MacPherson's experience there as a correspondent for Time magazine. He was also the author of several books of nonfiction published by Random House that became bestsellers, such as Roberts Ridge (2005), reportage about one of the bloodiest battles of the war in Afghanistan, and Time Bandit (2008), about fishermen working in the Bering Sea.
Shelf Awareness had the privilege of interviewing MacPherson about Hocus POTUS (Shelf Awareness, August 21, 2007). MacPherson was a talkative, friendly, entertaining, wise man. Speaking about the book and its prospects, he said, "I have to take a Zen approach. . . . Hocus POTUS either twigs with the readers of America or doesn't. I've always had modest expectations for this. For some, book publishing is like running around in a field in a rainstorm hoping lightning hits you, which is a one in a 20 million chance. I'm too old for that. I'd rather just stand there in the rainstorm."
Dennis Johnson of Melville House wrote: "Having been raised in the shadow of Disneyland--the construction of which he witnessed as a child, and later wrote about in his novel In Cahoots--may have contributed to the sense of life as a great, good-hearted adventure that Malcolm imparted to those of us lucky enough to call him a friend. He seemed to find cause for cheerful wonderment in even the most dire situations. While writing his book about the Alaskan fishermen, he once called his editor at Melville House from the middle of the Bering Sea, well-known as some of the most treacherous waters in the world, to chat, casually mentioning that the fishing boat he was on had lost power and would most likely not be rescued for another day or two. When the editor suggested he might want to conserve the batteries of his cell phone, Malcolm replied, 'I know. I just wanted to see if I could get a connection. It's the damnedest thing, isn't it?' "