Please allow me to be clear that this not about name-dropping but rather displaying the fireside lives of authors. Along the way, I met many major bestselling & award-winning authors and can recount many fascinating tales, several of which I offer up here. It was a very colorful way to grow up, surrounded by the vibrancy of literature, authors and other creative types. They had Mary Travers of the band Peter, Paul and Mary babysit my father. My grandmother was a practicing socialist, was previously married to Rod Steiger ( On the Waterfront and Al Capone) and she taught acting to Sidney Poitier at the Lee Strasberg Actors Studio.

My grandfather also read Wilhelm Reich and sent his children to Summerhill, considered to be the first alternative “free” school. My grandfather was a poet who founded The Woodstock Times and bought Bob Dylan’s house from him in Woodstock. Or maybe it began with my beatnik grandparents. Both my parents worked in major trade book publishing, my father as a literary agent and my mother in contracts departments at various publishing houses, so it always seemed I was destined to go into book publishing. It always seemed that I was growing up with a prophecy hanging over my head.

More importantly, he explains why we know and love these authors. Here he discusses some of the major bestselling authors many of us have come to know and love. This article was written exclusively for Bookstr by Mark Gottlieb, literary agent at Trident Media Group.

Lovligt byte janet evanovich