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| Peter Beren | |
Peter Beren, publisher, literary agent, author, and champion of the arts and culture of the Bay Area, died on June 28. He was 75.
Beren began his career in 1976 as an editor at And/Or Press. He joined Sierra Club Books in 1988 as marketing director and spent the next nine years building the book publishing and calendar business, culminating in his role as publisher. He then was the founding publisher of VIA Books, a division of the California State Automobile Association, distributed to the book trade by Andrews McMeel, and after that, joined Palace Press International as v-p of publishing from 2004 to 2008. He then started Peter Beren Associates literary and consulting agency.
Beren also authored or co-authored The Writers Legal Companion, The Golden Gate, and California the Beautiful. His articles have appeared in Mother Jones, Newsweek, Publishers Weekly, and Tufts magazine.
As a literary agent, publisher, and editor, Beren worked with such photographers as Art Wolfe, Frans Lanting, Galen Rowell, and Baron Wolman, as well as scholars Colin Wilson, Ralph Metzner and Robert Anthon Wilson. He published illustrators Jack Katz and Brian Froud, the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia, and California State Senator and counterculture icon Tom Hayden.
A celebration of life is planned for later this summer in the Bay Area. To receive more information and/or send condolences to share with the family, please e-mail his friend and partner, Susan McConnell.